Edible Surprise Going on Now at Laurelhurst Elementary

One of our readers noticed the new planter bins and new gardens that have recently sprouted up around the west side of Laurelhurst Elementary. And not to mention, the nicely written and decorated signs by students placed in the gardens and bins.

When we sent email to Bethany Lara, one of the 1st grade teachers, asking about this project, she responded:

"It's our new school focus/project. Each class gets it's own plot and some classes have decided to do winter and spring crops, spring crops only, lettuce only for local food banks, themed gardens based on classroom cirriculum, etc.

We would love to share what we are doing but for the bigger story you might want to contact Pat Howard or Grace Dublin, both 5th grade teachers and the big leaders of our school garden. They worked really hard to get additional garden space, applied for grants to buy starts, seeds, and anything else we might need."

So we sent mail to Mr. Howard and he graciously offered for one of his students to write an article about these edible gardens.

Above is a picture of the 3rd grade plot. They studied a Pioneer unit and chose winter wheat for their garden project.

Thanks to Galen, the awesome writer, for letting our neighborhood know about this great project!

Laurelhurst’s Edible Garden

The students at Laurelhurst Elementary School have an edible surprise! There are 3 planter bins and one designated area assigned for a school wide-edible garden. Laurelhurst classes have worked for the last 2 months to put together a garden.

The school garden was planted around late September and early October. For now the plants include cabbage, lettuce, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli and wheat. We have made this garden to help the environment, to learn about where our food comes from and to make Laurelhurst Elementary a prettier place to learn. We used Cedar Grove compost for soil, which we helped create by giving Cedar Grove our lunch scraps to compost.

Come by and see Laurelhurst Elementary’s school wide garden, it looks much better than the weeds that used to be there. We have worked hard to weed and plant so our garden is beautiful.

By Galen Ogden

Here are pictures from the 1st grade planter box:

And 2nd grade: