Savoring and Celebrating Summer
The Kids' Garden at Troy Gardens

Author: Erin Parker

The Kid’s Garden at Troy Gardens is vibrant with flowers and vegetables, bursting with color and scent under a hot August sun. The children’s garden space is nestled into the 31 acres that make up Troy Gardens: a collection of community garden plots, an urban organic CSA farm, a restored prairie, and even an environmentally friendly, mixed-income community housing unit on Madison, Wisconsin’s northeast side.

“We are accessible, we’re literally in a neighborhood,” explains Education Director Nathan Larson. “Kids can come on their own. The Kid’s Garden program really is a portal into a relationship with this place and with the natural world.”

The Kid’s Garden program has expanded and evolved from its inception as 10 donated community garden plots in 2001. Today, the garden is a permanent feature surrounded by mosaic fence posts — a project that combined local artists, Kid’s Garden participants, and other local community members. The garden program curriculum serves about 500 kids each year through partnerships with local elementary schools and community learning centers, which provide care for low-income families after school and during the summer. The Kid’s Garden program also moves indoors in the fall, providing in-class instruction and fun to local classrooms.

“I think that this garden offers an important alternative learning environment for children because children can really discover this place in their own way, at their own pace. They can experience it physically through digging in the garden and hauling compost, artistically through drawing and coloring, or through their senses of touch and taste,” Larson said.

Troy Gardens’ Savor the Summer Festival takes place each year in August and is a community-wide event with tours of the gardens, cooking demonstrations, music, food, and of course, kids activities. The Kid’s Garden activities include potato sack races, face painting, and the creation of rain sticks and mosaic suncatchers. The music and food demonstrations include traditions from Hmong and Latino families, as well as more typical Midwestern fare.

The day before the big community-wide celebration, Troy Gardens is a busy place. Community gardeners work in plots that surround the Kid’s Garden, several farm interns are preparing for the arrival of today’s participants, a group of teenage boys from the Dane County Focus program for adjudicated youth have arrived to assist in the garden, and the Kid’s Garden chickens are waiting to be fed.

The Kid’s Garden is overflowing with ripening produce from amaranth to zucchini. The plants are all from donated starts, primarily from the Oakhill Correctional Institute. The kids plant the seedlings, tend the garden, and harvest the produce. Whatever isn’t eaten on site during the day, children take home to share with their families. The purchase of a solar oven has aided with enjoying the harvest. There are also plans in the works to build a cob (earthen) oven within the Kid’s Garden space to allow even more culinary creativity. Over the course of each summer, every child takes home a fresh egg from the “egg lottery” as well.

“On the surface it can seem quite ordinary, but so much goes on here. These kids really get to be part of something special, “ said Larson. He gazes at the ever-expanding border of the garden. “I think we serve as a model for other children’s garden programs, and our desire is to help with increasing the amount of home-grown food in schools and to help support having gardens in every school.”

The Kid’s Garden makes up the largest educational component of Troy Gardens and the input of the children is critical.

“It’s a special place, the kids get a sense of ownership,” said Larson. One of the most important things for him is that the children have choice in what they do each day at the garden. They can choose from stations like feeding the chickens, digging a place for new plants, or doing something artistic. The other important part of the Kid’s Garden is the people. “It’s such a wonderful learning environment, and there is a lot of energy flowing into it. We have such amazing, dynamic people who want to make this a better place.” Local high school students come and participate in summer intensive programs or earn community service credit towards graduation by acting as mentors in the Kid’s Garden. College students are hired on as interns, and community members volunteer.

Van doors open and out tumble a group of elementary school students in matching florescent orange shirts. They run, skip, and somersault their way to the garden. They are excited to be here before they even learn what they’ll be doing this morning: making pickles from the cucumbers that they carefully tended all summer long. These kids may be heading back to school shortly, but the lessons they’ve learned here will stick with them. As Larson sums it up, “There is a lot of learning happening underneath the fun!”

For more information about the Kids' Garden, please visit the Friends of Troy Gardens Web site.

Erin Parker is in charge of the summer Children’s Garden program at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin. The Children’s Garden provides six to eight weeks of gardening for Madison Metropolitan School District children (nearly 300 kindergarten through third graders), plus a mentoring component where approximately 50 junior high and high school students mentor the younger students. She is completing her teaching certification for secondary education in field science and biology.

Erin is a member of the Kidsgardening Advisory Board. This board of youth gardening experts and advocates from around the country provide NGA staff with ideas, suggestions, and feedback for kidsgardening.org.

 

Photos used by permission of Troy Gardens