What is a communal garden?
These are gardens in which everyone pitches in to help with digging, planting, watering and weeding. Then, everyone shares in the harvest.
Somehow, food seems to taste better when you’ve grown it yourself.
“Spinach! I really like spinach,” exclaimed Marquis Williams, 8.
Like other children who participate in City Blossoms programs, Marquis is learning about how to identify, care for and use many different plants. “We make salads from the vegetables we grow and add the mint we grow to our lemonade,” he said excitedly.
Alexis Ford, 9, recently harvested some radishes to share with her family. “I never ate radishes before,” she said. “I like them!”
What can kids learn?
Anaijah Headspeth, 11, learned a good tip. To avoid giving plants too much water, she said, “count to three — (one thousand one, one thousand two . . .) for each plant.”
Kids also learn how herbs can add flavor to what they eat. Recently Tyla Brown and Taylor Simpson, both 11, grew chives with the help of Lola Bloom, a co-founder of City Blossoms. Chives is an herb that looks like grass and smells like onions. When it was ready to harvest, the girls snipped it into tiny pieces to mix with some cream cheese. Tyla once thought that “it was weird eating plants,” but as she spread some of the dip on a cracker and tasted it, she smiled. “Yummmm!”
Xavier Brooks, 10, sniffed his fingers each time he rubbed them over different kinds of basil leaves. Thai basil reminded him of licorice, and lemon basil, of course, had a lemony smell. He thought other basil leaves smelled like air freshener.
What else do kids do at City Blossoms?
Third-grader Alexis loves to share her knowledge with visitors. Turning to the herb garden, she explains, “We don’t eat sugar here. We add different flavors to our tea by using herbs like mint and rosemary.”
There’s room for artistic talents, too. Cheerful signs, painted barrels and stepping-stones decorate the gardens. At one garden, an abandoned toilet decorated with painted vines is home to a variety of flowering plants.
The young gardeners also learn business skills. After making soap and body lotion from scratch — using lemon verbena or lavender from the garden to add a pleasant scent — they sell the products at a local farmers’ market to raise funds for the gardens.
Several children recently harvested and bagged handfuls of herbs — sage, chives and parsley — for residents who pay a small fee each month to enjoy a selection of fresh herbs from April to October.
And while these kids are having fun learning, they’ve helped beautify formerly neglected areas of their community, so the whole neighborhood benefits.
— Ann Cameron Siegal
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