Vegetation, student motivation thrive in Taft School garden

By DENISE DICK

denise_dick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Taft Grows Green sprouts tomatoes, green beans, blueberries, eggplant and pumpkins and, for one student, a new outlook.

Cortez Arroyo, 11, a fifth-grader at Taft Elementary School, had a hard time behaving in class last year.

“He begged me to work in the garden,” said Laurie McEwan, a Taft teacher and adviser for the school’s 4-H Club. “I told him, ‘Give me one week without problems’” and she would allow him to join Taft Grows Green, the 4-H Club that planted and maintains the garden across the street from the school, McEwan said.

That was last school year, and she hasn’t had problems with him since then.

“It’s been life-changing for him,” McEwan said.

Cortez loves working in the garden. He likes eating the fruits and vegetables produced there, too.

“I have a bag of vegetables in my refrigerator at home and I take some out and eat them every day on my salads and stuff,” Cortez said. “It’s good.”

The garden started four years ago on a smaller plot between two homes, one of them vacant. McEwan lobbied government officials who demolished vacant homes on the street. The garden moved a few parcels down on a bigger lot, and the club leases it from the Mahoning County Land bank for a nominal amount.

The bigger lot meant a bigger garden. Students helped build the beds and plant the bounty. Fruit trees, berry bushes and an herb garden were added.

Since the garden started, a South Range student has helped, using it as a senior project. This year, that’s Jenna Binsley.

When her teacher brought up the garden, Jenna wasn’t sure it was for her.

“I thought, ‘Well, I’ll try it out and see what it’s like,’” Jenna said.

She decided to stick with it. The Taft students were excited about the project and accepting of her role in it, she said.

Club members work in the garden over the summer and on Saturdays. Club membership declines during those times, but McEwan said there are six members who always show up to work.

The garden has gotten the attention of people in the neighborhood, too.

Tom Forrestal and Larry Allen are two of those people. Allen mows the grass surrounding the garden.

Forrestal pitches in for whatever needs to be done.

“We’ve developed a friendship,” McEwan said.

To address the challenge of getting water to the garden, the city granted a permit to the club to use the fire hydrant in front of the school. A $4,000 grant from the Raymond John Wean Foundation helped buy supplies.

McEwan calls the garden a true community garden. The students take some of the vegetables home, but they share with their classmates and the neighborhood.

Derek Pugh, 12, a seventh-grader at Rayen Early College Middle School, and Ja’Kiyah Rushton, 13, an eighth-grader at the Chaney Campus, have been with the club since its first year. They were Taft students but remained active members of Taft Grows Green even after they went to other schools.

Derek is club president.

“I like all of the people here, and I’m happy to be here,” he said.

Ja’Kiyah likes learning about gardening and tending to the plants.

“Every year I learn something that I didn’t learn the year before,” she said.

Club members entered projects in the Canfield Fair and one student, Anabel Castro, 10, a fifth-grader, went to the Ohio State Fair. She’s not a fan of vegetables – except carrots and broccoli – but she enjoys working in the garden.

This is fifth-grader Jordan Barich’s first year in the club.

“I liked planting the trees and seeing how they grow,” Jordan, 11, said.

The garden proved beneficial to McEwan as well as her students. The garden began about the same time her daughter died and working in the garden with the students helped her cope with the loss.

McEwan retires at the end of the school year, but she doesn’t plan to pass the garden off to someone else.

“I’ll still be here, volunteering with the garden,” she said.