LAUREL COUNTY, Ky. — A few weeks ago, I stood under the school bell at Science Hill Independent feeling a little nervous. Wearing my dad’s polka dot welding hat and clutching a binder to my chest, I watched the kindergarteners file out of the school with military precision. As it got closer to 3:15, I felt increasingly tense and ran over again what we needed to get accomplished in the next hour.

See, it was the first meeting of garden club with me as club leader. It’s a role I somehow fell into after having a talk with the superintendent about the need for an outdoor classroom last spring. Before I knew it, I was in charge of the project and so about six kids and I found ourselves tending to all manner of vegetables last summer.

Our garden was probably the most unsightly piece of land in all of Kentucky, with rows the shape of thunderbolts, soil littered with gravel left over from an auditorium renovation, and weeds that angrily tried to eat away at our progress.

But, over the summer, we ate a lot of watermelon, sprayed each other with a lot of water and eventually hauled in a decent harvest. We called it a success.

This year, I had bigger and better plans after having spent my fall taking a master gardener’s course. I now knew how to fertilize, I now knew how to grow transplants and I now had plans to get each kid to pick up a hundred rocks each meeting to try to get rid of them.

All I needed now were some members.

When the school receptionist called for the garden club to meet under the bell, I had visions of my stepdaughter Gabrielle being the only who showed up. But soon kids started streaming down the hallways until I was surrounded by a group of 25 that was raring to go.

We walked to the garden, they put down their school bags and it was immediate chaos, with the kids pecking me impatiently with questions. Never having dealt with more than about five kids at a time before, I was completely overwhelmed and felt their collective pressure pushing on me like a wave.

In an instant, I had a whole new appreciation for teachers, who must harness this energy, winnow these questions and turn the experience into something productive.

With Gabrielle’s help, I soon realized the greatest currency I had was giving the kids a job, no matter how trivial. It didn’t seem to matter if they were just carrying a trowel from one end of the garden to another, they seemed soothed by having something to do.

Eventually, I got five kids working on getting the hose set up, another two holding twine to get the rows in a straight line, another five hoeing and about seven filling pots with soil for tomato transplants. The rest picked rocks or stood in the spray of the hose, squealing happily as they got wet. And slowly but surely we got onions, carrots and lettuce planted, with the kids vying eagerly to plant as many seeds as they could.

Since, I’ve gotten more used to the kids and they’ve gotten more used to me. I have to admit, when we walk out to the garden and two of the third-graders each take my hand, it’s a pretty big thrill. When they see how much their tomato transplant has grown in a week it’s even more exciting.

Last week for our snack, we had an apple sampler, with the kids tasting five different kinds of apples. As I watched them thoughtfully taste each slice, compare it to the one before and ultimately decide on their favorite, I realized it was one of the most gratifying experiences I’d had in a year. Here were kids who wanted to do well, who wanted to help, who wanted to try new things.

So each evening as I water their tomato transplants and watch them grow in their pots, I look forward to garden club — and what the kids are going to teach me next.



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