By. Leo Fontneau
It is a warm spring day, the heat radiates through the air. I water the plants with the hose. Patches of sprouting seeds stand in contrast to the beds that have continued to grow plants from their predecessors. Throughout most of the year our garden at Springwater Trail High School has remained largely dormant. The weeds have flourished in the forgotten beds, much like the street of the lifted Lorax. Thick shrubs and flowers have continued to overtake parts of the beds. It’s current neglected state is a vivid contrast to the beacon of environmentalism and community that was our former garden built from the very dirt.
Springwater has always had a focus on environmentalism. Scattered through past yearbooks are images of people wrapped in cardboard armor indicating the school had a Green Club early in its history. The Garden Club is a more recent tradition of environmentalism among Springwater students. The Garden Club was at its peak around 2015 and has slowly faded into the background. The school has not always had the infrastructure it now has for food production.
Terrence Smyth, the former principal of Springwater Trail High School, notes his recollection of the garden at the start of his tenure. “I came here in the spring of 2007 and started that fall and then we didn’t have a real garden at that point - we had some raised beds.” The greenhouse was not built in a day or even a year, it took two years to build. Paul Kramer a former teacher at Springwater who was in charge of the process notes a major challenge for building the green house was getting approval to build a permanent structure. “The hardest part of getting the garden sited was all the "red tape" and meetings the district required in order to build the garden and greenhouse. I had to have a engineer develop garden plans and get permits from the city, etc...” The green house was funded by a grant from a health insurance company whose name has since been forgotten. After two years of going through every difficulty that arose, the community built the structure together on a community care day.
Growing, cooking and eating food is a rewarding shared experience between people. The Garden Club lead the way in providing quality fresh food for the community. Paul enjoyed the sense of community it created. “It's always rewarding to cook with fruits and veggies you have grown yourself. It is even more rewarding to get students interested in gardening and eating sustainably. It was also pretty cool to see the club members having fun with each other while they cook and eat. Community is important to me, and I really think we developed a strong bond within the group. We often did taste tests for the whole school, and I felt good about seeing all the STHS students try something new.”
Foster Hayes, a Springwater Alumnus noted, “Kale, that was the number one thing we grew. We always made them into chips.” The Garden Club was a welcoming group, that had a larger reach than the core dedicated group to maintaining it. Students and staff were treated to the fruits of their labor.
Mr. Ramsey lightheartedly remarks about eating the food that the Garden Club produced. “I would just walk in the room, 'Oh! Hah! That is funny, it looks like you are …. cooking some food... could I eat it?' And they would share.”
Previous freshmen benefited from the efforts of these students. During freshmen orientation students would make pizza with Paul Kramer with ingredients produced by the community.
Paul Kramer details this awesome experience’s origins: “The pizza thing started the summer after the first year the garden was built. So I believe that was 2013-2014. At first, the orientation included some team building and ice breakers centered on garden work. We harvested tomatoes, and other veggies, and made sauce / pizza together.”
The Garden Club was a popular club for a number of years. Terrence Smyth noted the involvement of the students in the Garden Club as, “It was pretty robust, sometimes there were 20-25 students in the club.” The club had a core handful of dedicated students that were involved from the start. The club was a cultural landmark for Springwater because of how unusual and quirky it was. Paul Kramer explained, “students wanted to change its name; they wanted it to sound like a cult, so we called ourselves The Children of Gaia.” The club was lighthearted and a great chance for students to get out of the classroom. Ramsey recalls the energy of the students working in the garden; “Students love to be engaged in the world to get out of the classroom and do stuff with their hands, and so they always looked very happy doing the work.”
Involvement in our garden is a part of the unique experience that being a student at Springwater is. Ramsey elaborates on what the garden feels like to the school, saying “we do things a little differently and I think that works something that is just a little different and somehow the garden feels that way....it seems connected to the school”.
Currently the garden is in a recovery state. Regardless of the care given to the plants, a part of the garden was designed to outlast the designers. A section of the garden is full of perennials that are designed to be self sustaining. As summer approaches, the community has a chance to step up and revitalize the garden. In the summer when the building is empty as students go off on vacations, the plants are in need of attention to keep the plants hydrated from the intense extreme heat. The creation of a garden at Springwater sparked an environmental movement to flourish.
Coming up on the next school year I encourage you to ask yourself what it could become.