Chaparral Elementary School fifth-grader Merrick Maier was one of several “Busy Bees” at the 10-year anniversary celebration for the campus Hawks Health Garden.
“A Busy Bee helps take care of the garden and helps younger kids get an education through the garden,” said Merrick, 11. “I’ve learned lots of science in the garden. Stuff about plants, DNA, how to grow things, and what plants are edible and which aren’t edible. I’ve also learned about nature, like how bees and ants help the entire planet.”
Merrick and other students over the past decade have watched the Hawks Health Garden grow and expand at the Poway school. He first visited the garden as a kindergartener. Then he began helping other students take care of it when he became a third-grader.
“I like how it teaches everyone something,” Merrick said. “The garden has been a fun place just in general.”
Along with the student Busy Bees, parents, staff, Poway Valley Garden Club and those involved in launching Hawks Health Garden toured the garden off the school’s main playground on April 22. Several Chaparral students played jazz music in the background.
Retired Chaparral third-grade teacher Nancy Bellinghiere-Hall, the founder and catalyst for getting the garden started, talked about how she had a vision for providing outdoor education through a nature-based garden.
“I was the ringleader to get people to donate,” Bellinghiere-Hall said. “This is the only elementary school garden in the Poway Unified School District that is run by teachers instead of parents.”
Fifth-grader Niah Gomez, 11, said she is inspired by Stevie Zech, a teacher and garden lead, who has helped improve the garden and battle weather changes, insects and other pests.
“She is always here early in the morning and is always helping everybody out,” Niah said.
Other helpers include Master Gardener adviser Joelle Kohn, who was hired by the district to do lessons in the garden. Currently, Chaparral’s 880-plus students in transitional kindergarten to fifth grade attend monthly grade-based science or engineering lessons in the garden, Bellinghiere-Hall said.
In its early stages, students used recycled yogurt quarts to fill six garden beds built with the help of Boy Scouts, she said. Children added soil donated by Kellogg’s and plant seeds gifted by the San Diego Master Gardeners.
Over the years, funds from various organizations such as the Poway Valley Garden Club and the Rancho Bernardo Community Foundation were used to make such improvements as adding learning stations to the garden. Today it has four teaching spaces along with eight raised planter beds filled with flowers, pumpkins, onions, lettuce, citrus and other plants.
Other features include four fruit trees, a pollinator garden, succulent bed and compost and weather stations.
Heather Holland, outreach grant chair for the Poway Valley Garden Club, said the club generally gives $5,000 to $6,000 each year to school and community gardens. As president of the Master Gardeners Association of San Diego County, she said that organization also provides $15,000 each year to school and community gardens across the county.
“They allow hands-on learning,” Holland said. “Students learn by doing rather than reading about it. And they’re learning to grow things and learn about teamwork.”
A Master Gardener since 2012, Holland has visited Chaparral twice to give students in the lower grades lessons about vermicomposting. She taught them how to recycle organic matter using worms to break down food to make a soil amendment.
Other Master Gardeners teach students about pest assessment, suggest what types of plants to grow each season, help with irrigation and offer tips to help kids and teachers be successful, she said.
“Incorporating all of the senses is part of the gardening experience,” Holland said. “It’s about smelling flowers and watching things grow, watching the birds, but it’s also about tasting in the garden. If you spend four months trying to grow broccoli, you are going to eat it. If you have watched it growing forever, it’s definitely something you want to taste.”
Tasting the fruits of their labor is part of the enjoyment students get from the garden while they learn about subjects from weather to math, Bellinghiere-Hall said. The school is also part of Poway Unified’s Garden to Plate program, which enables school-grown produce to be served in the cafeteria.
Lessons over the years have included measuring rainfall using rain gutters and rain barrels, and visualizing the transpiration process in a greenhouse, she said.
“Half the class gets a science lesson while the other half of the class works in the garden on composting or harvesting,” she said. “Then they switch and they all get a tasting afterwards.”
Fifth-grader Youssef Ismail, 11, said the garden is a calm place where he has learned how bees pollinate flowers and about the history of Native Americans on the school’s Kumeyaay Native Trail.
“The garden is an awesome place to learn,” Youssef said. “When you get into the fourth or fifth grade you have an opportunity to work in this area. You learn how to be responsible, how to water plants and how to be a farmer.”
Bellinghiere-Hall said the garden has been a community project over the years. Some of the volunteers who have been involved include a Poway park ranger who painted a sign with a barn owl, turkey vulture and bald eagle that helps kids figure out their own wingspan, to parent Curtis Lubben who built a hawks kiosk that features literature about the red-shouldered, red-tailed and cooper’s hawks.
Anniversary attendees included former school librarian Jodi Tibbs and friend Christiane Staninger.
“This is astounding and we love how the kids take care of the garden, then get to see where the food comes from,” Staninger said. “I think it would be great if they had this event every year. I think the community would like to visit.”
Matthew Morga, a former Chaparral Elementary student who now attends Miramar College, was a third-grader when the garden first started. He said he was surprised the garden was even better than he ed.
“I loved it since day one,” Morga said. “I would spend every moment helping as much as I could. It’s great to see something I enjoyed while I was here still continuing strong.”
