Teaching Good Eating At Good Ground Garden

Tucked against the back of the Hampton Bays Middle School sits the Good Ground Community Garden. With multicolor tin butterflies adorning the fencing, the well-appointed garden feels spacious, despite its small size. Students worked with a local artist to paint a large farming mural that hangs on the wall.From integrating the school curriculum into the garden to re-purposing old materials, the project is always at the forefront of Joan Moran’s mind. The middle school teacher founded the garden in 2009 as a way to encourage healthy eating habits in students.

“They gave us Smart Boards yesterday and I said to the guy, ‘Give me the cardboard, it is such a good weed block,’” said Ms. Moran.

The garden is divided into school and community planters, a raised bed for the Southampton Senior Center and perimeter beds for strawberries and pollinator plants like butterfly weed and Maryland golden aster. A small section is also reserved every year for elementary school students to plant seedlings in June.

Ms. Moran is excited about two new additions this year: a planter of native plants, which will be purchased from the Suffolk Community College Long Island Native Plant Initiative, and a patch to grow the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. Ms. Moran hopes these additions will help students learn about plant diversity as well as insects.

“When I take the kids out there and they ask if cucumbers are real, they really don’t know,” said Ms. Moran. “They really don’t know food comes from the earth.”

In addition to the biology education, Ms. Moran hopes that the garden helps create “a lifetime of healthy habits.” To support this goal, the school has a bilingual nutritionist for fifth- and sixth-graders as well as cooking demonstrations using fresh garden produce.

Separate from the school’s garden, although hosted in the same space, community member beds are available on a first-come, first-served basis for $30 a year. Volunteers must spend at least 10 hours doing work for the general garden, in addition to the time they spend tending to their own plots. They are also required to attend an information session at the beginning of the year.

Inside the greenhouse, there is a small chalkboard so members can tell each other what tasks need to be done. The group describes their practices as democratic.

During the summertime, Pat Sanders, a former teacher, bikes over to the school at 7 in the morning to tend her plot at the community garden. In the past, she has raised cherry tomatoes, black cherry tomatoes, kale, Swiss chard and cucumbers. This summer she plans to try carrots as well as heirloom varieties of tomatoes that she picked up at the Long Island Seed Swap Initiative this winter.

Two of the community beds grow food strictly for the food pantry at St. Rosalie’s Church. Ms. Moran thought other community gardeners might have extra produce to donate, so she devised a practical system for members to indicate that they had extra produce during the bountiful summer and fall season.

Using a wooden stick painted pink on one side, members keep the pink side up if there are extra vegetables available on their plot and down if they plan to use all of their produce that week.

Ms. Moran estimates that they donated between 500 and 1,000 pounds of produce last summer.

The students’ garden sells fresh lettuce, tomatoes, herbs and other produce to Whitson’s, the school’s food service provider, for lunches. To abide by safety laws, a person certified in food handling must wash the produce and record its temperature.

“We fill up huge bins of lettuce and produce,” said Ms. Moran, adding that the process is not difficult to coordinate. The money that Whitson’s pays for the produce goes into the Kiwanis Builders Fund for future garden expenses.

The biggest difficulty for the school’s garden is labor. A parent volunteer group maintains the greenhouse and works to harvest food for the lunchroom.

The project doesn’t receive any money from the school and is responsible for all of its own fundraising projects, including a $10,000 greenhouse that was erected last year. Initial grant money provided for cedar beds, a shed fence, tools and a wheelbarrow. “It is so new for schools to have this. Sports are built [into the budget] already,” explained Ms. Moran.

The garden hosts various fundraising events throughout the year. In addition to individual donations, local businesses often donate supplies or services. Ms. Moran describes the amount of community support “unbelievable.”

The community garden also boasts a master gardener, thanks to donations from the Josh Levine Memorial Foundation. Many community gardens on the East End host master gardeners—essentially teachers—thanks to this program, which was started more than five years ago.

“You have the passion for it, but you may not know when to plant,” said Ms. Moran.

“That should be the goal, if you learn you can do a bed at home,” said Judy Leopard, who is planting her own bed at home this year. The elementary school teacher brings her class to the garden and also has her own plot in the community garden.

Grateful for the community’s support, Ms. Moran said the one thing they would really love is more space.

“When parents are in the back because of sports, they are so impressed,” she said. “Everybody loves it.”