ROGERS — What started as a collection of pots last year has turned into a full-fledged garden this year, and Jones teacher Liz Smith uses it daily with her second graders.

Already this year her class has harvested potatoes and carrots, and with the help of the Jones cafeteria staff, they tasted their work. In fact, all the second and third graders at the school had a chance to taste the vegetables since it was this year's third graders who did the planting last spring.

They're also harvesting tomatoes daily. Those go into the teachers' lounge so the teachers can buy them. Some teachers bring tomatoes home, but many eat them for lunch, Smith said. The money raised by the sale of tomatoes will go back into the garden, but it's the students who will decide what to buy.

"They may decide the garden needs more plants or more bird seed," she said, or they may choose to be more decorative and buy stepping stones or a sculpture. Whatever they decide, it will be incorporated into the garden.

Grants paid for most of the materials, and Smith isn't finished writing grants. She's waiting to hear about two separate grants, which may help pay for an outdoor math and science center in the form of a solar-powered fountain and a man-made creek bed. The creek bed will occasionally be filled by water from a downspout and students will study the effect of erosion. A bridge will cross it. The bridge, Smith said, will be made out of geometric shapes, so it will become a lesson in arches and angles.

New additions to the garden, like the bridge and fountain, keep everyone interested, she said.

She's also arranging for a University of Arkansas student to visit the school with a lesson on worm farming.

"We could do a whole summer school out there," Smith said of the garden area. Eventually, she hopes to have shade trees and picnic tables close by.

While Smith is the driving force behind the Jones garden, she's had a lot of volunteer help. Several members of the Master Gardeners program have spent time at the school helping her plan and then plant the raised beds. There have also been members of an environmental group from Rogers High School, as well as a few parents. Over the summer, several of her former second graders came by to help her weed and keep the garden growing strong while school was out of session.

One of the Master Gardeners, a former teacher, will present a professional development program to the entire staff about using the garden for learning.

"Hands on is great," she said, "but we have to link it directly to the state standards."

One way to link gardening to state standards is measurement, a topic that all second graders must learn. Smith's class measured the giant sunflowers for a math lesson. They've also had the chance to learn about measuring liquids when they mixed up the humming bird nectar. A chart that records daily temperatures is also taken from the math curriculum, she said.

"Kids have lost that connection to nature," she said. "This may help make them environmentally conscious."

Many of the parents have thanked her for giving their children a new interest and Smith suspects that there may be more home gardens than usual among her students and former students and that, she said, makes Rogers a better place to live.

Scholars, Pages 8 on 09/08/2009

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