Hiawatha Elementary among test sites for gardening program

HIAWATHA - Second-grader Isaac Hofferber plucked a tiny green sprout from a garden growing outside Hiawatha Elementary School.

“Here's a weed,” the 7-year-old said last week before pointing to a cucumber seedling, “and that's a plant.”

Isaac and other Hiawatha students are learning more than plant differentiation with a new Healthy Gardens, Healthy Youth program. Nine raised garden beds are outdoor classrooms where students are picking up principles of math, science and nutrition.

Even artwork and language arts are incorporated into the gardening curriculum. Drawings accompany poems in the school's hallways, denoting students' love of apples, oranges, strawberries and watermelon.

Jacki Luckstead, youth programs coordinator for Iowa State University Extension, said the project will be evaluated to see whether children are more apt to choose fruits and vegetables for lunch after having firsthand experience growing produce. Photos of students' lunch trays were taken at the beginning of the school year and are being taken again to show what students choose in the lunch line and what they discard.

The program carries over to the students' families, said Julie Bradley, staff coordinator for the program at Hiawatha Elementary.

“I have been pleasantly surprised,” she said, citing students who persuaded their parents to buy edamame after tasting the boiled green soybean snack in class. Bradley said 120 second- and fourth-graders are involved in the program at the school.

Linn County Master Gardeners assist with planting and the snacks, which are funded by a Wellmark Foundation grant. Onions, peas, lettuce, carrots, spinach and other vegetables grow in the raised beds, which will be tended during the summer months by other volunteers so the students can harvest produce when they return in the fall.

The Hiawatha project is one of 17 sites in Iowa and 54 overall to participate in the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service People's Garden School Pilot Program. Besides Iowa, the program is being tested in Washington, New York and Alabama.

Brad Gaolach and Martha Aitken of Washington State University Extension - which is leading the national pilot - visited the Linn County school Wednesday to see the progress firsthand.

“This helps us get a sense of how the projects are working on the ground,” Gaolach said.

The program will continue through July 2013 and data will be tallied by September to see if the project should continue, he said. Half of the classrooms in the project are controls, so data can be compared between students who are and are not exposed to gardening.

Gaolach said an overriding goal is to end childhood obesity.

“Can you improve nutrition if you give students access to gardening?” he said, citing some of the questions the pilot hopes to answer. “Are kids more likely to eat more fruits and vegetables if given that access?”