Hands-on learning (in the dirt)

Maeve Stewart loves to devour fresh garden tomatoes at school.

“I’ve eaten so many from here,” the eighth-grader said of the garden and greenhouse at St. John XXIII Catholic School in Port Washington.

Chili peppers are another story.

“I had to go inside and eat crackers and cookies,” Maeve said. “Meanwhile, my friend handled it like a champ. She has a really high spice tolerance.”

Trying new vegetables is one of the many yields of the two-year-old school garden.

Students helped design and build the garden, which includes a greenhouse for plants to survive winter and an irrigation system, and they care for the plants throughout the school year.

Grants from the Bruce Krier Foundation, Victory Noll Sisters, Milwaukee Archdiocese Grant Initiatives for Today’s Students and a gift from a retired math teacher made the project possible with total donations of about $50,000.

The St. John XXIII Men’s Society led the greenhouse effort as part of the school’s Love Grows project under former principal Kristine Klein.

The garden and greenhouse give students hands-on learning and teaches life skills and healthy habits while integrating faith.

Much of the garden’s harvest is given to the Port Washington Food Pantry, amounting to about 200 pounds of food since the garden started.

“It feels like you’re a way better person to give to people who don’t have any food,” eighth-grader Kinley Cottrell said.

Those donations are especially important since the pantry is seeing some of its highest need ever, school Principal Marie Lippe said.

The school’s elective and extracurricular class leads the maintenance of the garden, and all ages get to work on it or learn from it in some way, shape or form.

Just introducing the experience of having a garden is right up the educational alley for seventh and eighth grade math and science teacher Adam Chilinski, who has a bachelor’s degree in natural resources.

“Most kids never put their hands in soil,” he said. “By the end of the elective they’re usually not wearing any gloves.”

It took work to get the initiative started, but students enjoyed the endeavor. And now they are getting an education they couldn’t get from a textbook or laptop.

“I’ve learned how to plant better,” Kinley said.

“And picking things properly,” Maeve added.

They rake the wood chips, pull weeds and come across gardens’ typical critters. Maeve said she is not a fan of aphids and once had a spider in her hair.

Temperatures inside the greenhouse can reach into the 80s, adding to the challenge of physical labor.

“We had to hose ourselves off,” Maeve said.

Seeing the fruits — and vegetables — of their labor has been worth it.

“We got an entire bucket of tomatoes and cucumbers. It was awesome,” Kinley said.

Kinley said she liked making salsa. Maeve tried kimchi, a Korean dish made from fermented vegetables, for the first time. Chilinski admitted “it wasn’t all that good.”

Some of the garden’s produce includes jalapeño and green peppers, summer and butternut squash, carrots, tomatoes, patty pan squash and potatoes in addition to an herb bed. 

The students also plant and tend to flowers.

The gardening experience has provided a new appreciation for the work farmers do.“It’s fun to do it for 45 minutes, but I couldn’t do it every day,” Maeve said.

Teachers may also pick produce from the garden, and many have used it as an educational tool for science or agriculture. Even the school’s youngest students in early childhood classes are introduced to the plants.

“It makes teaching fun. They’re so engaged,” Lippe said.

The garden survived recent floods without damage. The wood chips absorbed the water, Chilinski said.

“Everything has been thriving,” he said.

During summer, past students and those from the parish who don’t attend St. John XXIII help care for the garden.

“It’s a win all the way around,” Chilinski said. “Our mission here is to educate the whole child.”

The garden and greenhouse program will continue to grow.  “Our goal is to expand it a little more and see what the community wants,” he said.