Talk about straight from the garden.
As the Greensboro Montessori School’s semester wound down, Spanish and gardening teacher Walter Moore ’05 and Charlie Headington, UNCG lecturer, guided fourth-graders in picking plants from the garden the students had cultivated.
Moore is an advocate for permaculture, explaining that he wants to grow food “in a way that works with nature and the environment.” He works sometimes with a local farmer who hand-cultivates, without a tractor.
He works with the fourth- and fifth-graders. Another gardening teacher, 2007 UNCG graduate Jenny Kimmel, works part-time teaching gardening with the first- through third-graders.
They eat it up … literally.
“I grew up on a farm,” says Kimmel. “We grew all our food growing up.” She and her brother plan to start redeveloping that farm, and she hopes to sell produce through CSAs, community-supported agriculture contracts between growers and consumers.
She has worked with Headington as part of the gardening program since her freshman year. In addition to her work at the school, she now works nearly full-time at Haw River State Park as an environmental educator.
The fourth-graders gardened with Moore and Headington and UNCG interns in small groups. Some prepared the ground for seedlings, some harvested produce, some prepared a meal made almost entirely of what they grew.
Christian Durango, a rising UNCG sophomore and an intern, helped them prepare it, as the young gardeners gathered at a picnic table. He said he valued how this program exposes the young students to nature. “They eat it up … literally.”
Read more and enjoy a slideshow highlighting the gardening program.
Photography by Chris English, University Relations
