Gardens at Gantz Farm
City of Grove City Education Coordinator Gloria Hartung says her childhood was an exploration of open nature, gathering wild strawberries and picking dandelions for her mother. But it seems between school, soccer tournaments, dance lessons and whatever else is scheduled, children today are often too busy for such things.
This, Hartung says, is partly what motivated her to initiate the Garden Sprouts program at Grove City’s historic Garden at Gantz.
“I don’t think kids are outside enough and they’re not out in nature,” Hartung says. “I wanted kids to be able to connect with nature and the rhythms of nature, how things come in and out of season, how the plants grow.”
By 2006, the Garden Sprouts summer program was up and running, teaching 3 to 9-year-olds in the community to harvest from farm to table.
Flora and fauna
Gardens at Gantz Farm
Weekly Garden Sprouts classes range in activity, but all involve new lessons for children on gardening, harvesting and cooking.
“They plant things and then they’re responsible every week for weeding the garden beds, watering, tending to the beds, picking whatever needs to be picked,” Hartung says. “We start with peas and cold season crops – kale, chard, spinach – so that, by the time that first class comes in, they actually have something that they can pick.”
Children might also learn to train tomatoes with cages, twine peas up trellises and grow a variety of produce including cucumbers, peppers, beans, lettuce and zucchini – just to name a few. They then use those ingredients as well as plants from other gardens on the property to complete fresh recipes, Hartung says.
“They may pick the lettuce and (if its) pretty high you can make this salad with lettuce and spinach and they can make their own dressing by using the herbs in the garden,” Hartung says, “So it’s a learning experience all the way through.”
Hartung says the recipes are simple and easy for the children to recreate at home. Some of the kids’ favorite dishes include veggie pizzas, salsa, pickles, veggie skewers, kale chips, zucchini pancakes and most of all – ice cream.
“We used to make ice cream every year,” Hartung says. “On the property we have blueberries and raspberries and strawberries so a lot of the kids like to put the fruit in; they could put mint leaves in, there’s a lot of things they have done.”
Nine-year-old Keegan Rains, a returning Garden Sprouts participant, says his favorite recipes to take home from class are zucchini pizza, zucchini bread and the famous ice cream.
“It was like a custard type thing, and it was really good,” Rains says. “I think I put strawberries in mine.”
Rains’ mother, Katie Rains, says her son would come home from every class excited to share new recipes with his family.
“We even added it to our dinner menu to make a zucchini pizza one time after that because he enjoyed it so much,” Katie says, “It was just an awesome experience.”
Classes also involve other fun gardening ventures like making garden stakes or painting watering stations for bees and butterflies, Hartung says. There’s also a flower garden for the children to enjoy with bachelor’s buttons, cosmos, marigolds and sunflowers.
The Garden Sprouts are encouraged to explore the expanse of the remarkable Gantz gardens, picking blueberries, for example, and learning about all aspects of nature.
“Kids like bugs for some unknowable reason – we do a lot of work finding bugs in the garden, seeing what they’re doing,” Hartung says. “Just to get them out more and to learn how life works.”
Growing patience
“For one thing it teaches patience,” Hartung says. “If you’re putting a seed from a green bean in the ground, it’s going to be a long time before the green bean has vined.”
Gardens at Gantz Farm
Katie agrees with Hartung and says she sees value in the program and its many lessons.
“I think we live in an immediate world right now and I think the kids learning how to wait is a good thing,” Katie says.
The whole experience also gives children a sense of accomplishment, Hartung says.
“They can go to the store and buy a packet of carrot seeds and take them home and put them in a pot or in the ground and a few months later (they’re) going to be able to dig their own carrots up,” Hartung says.
Katie similarly says the program permits children to experience ownership as they choose what vegetables to grow on their own plot of land and learn to care for them.
“It really gave responsibility to kids in terms of gardening,” Katie says, “And also (my son) tried different vegetables that he had never tried before because they would find really interesting ways to combine the stuff that was in the garden.”
Gardens at Gantz Farm
Back to their roots
Hartung says she’s inspired by the children she works with, watching them learn to appreciate nature.
“I like working with kids, they’re enthusiastic, they’re all creative, they’re quite interesting conversationalists,” she says with a laugh. “The kids love being in the gardens, they love smelling the flowers, they love being able to feel the texture of a lamb’s ear.”
Though it may be small, a solid community has formed from the Garden Sprouts program. Some kids, Hartung says, come back every year until age 9 – some return well after that.
“My first group, a few of them have come back here,” Hartung says. “They are out of college now and most of them are married and some have children, so they have come back to say hello and most of them are still gardening.”
Gardens at Gantz Farm
That sense of community has even reached into participants’ lives at home. Katie says her son enjoyed the Garden Sprouts so much that he requested his own vegetable garden at home for him and his sister.
“He got to pick which types of vegetables he wanted, and they would go out every morning and look at the vegetable garden,” Katie says. “Even our neighbors have three sons, and they would go out every morning and water the vegetables and they would set up chairs to watch the vegetables grow.”
The Garden Sprouts, Katie says, has sparked this shared passion and joy for gardening that her family has been able to share with their neighbors.
“It was so incredible,” Rains says. “I loved it, it was so much fun.”
Frances Denman is an editorial assistant at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
