Growth Potential

An oblong of turf pinched between brick walls is growing into an oasis of learning for Northview Elementary pupils, thanks to the design skills of K-State landscape architecture faculty and the determination of volunteers.

“Our department of landscape architecture/regional and community planning has a history of service and outreach to communities,” said assistant professor Katie Kingery-Page. “The Northview Learning Garden continues that tradition.”

Kingery-Page’s involvement, which began last spring, gave new direction to a project that started two years ago with a conversation in another garden.

Linda Teener, executive director of UFM, and Shelley Aistrup, Northview’s principal, were talking in the Manhattan Community Gardens. They found themselves agreeing on how grade-specific garden plots at Northview could benefit the school’s growing population.

“So we began the expedition to find funding,” said Teener, who is overseeing the garden’s construction.

Money came from many different directions - a Peine Family grant, the McCormick Foundation’s Yes! Fund, along with a minigrant from the National Gardening Association and Home Depot. Kingery-Page helped secure funds from K-State’s Center for Engagement and Community Development.

The garden’s eventual success depends not just on money, but also on a wide range of professionals who volunteer after hours to hash out conflicts and strategy while sitting in the small wooden chairs of Northview’s library.

A February planning session, led by Kingery-Page, included Jeff Chaffee, director of operations at Master Landscape; John Mayberry, director of facilities and transportation for USD 383; and Dan McGee, the Northview PTA’s landscaping chairman who just happens to be a plant science tech with K-State’s Division of Facilities. Teener and Aistrup also were on hand.

John Hunt, an assistant professor of landscape architecture, attended too. He’s been leading workshops for pupils to develop a shade structure over the outdoor classroom. One possible design would cast shadows in the shape of the school emblem, the North Star.

Pupils and teachers aren’t the only living things to need shelter from the Kansas sun. By locating several planting beds right next to the building, Kingery-Page’s design will allow shade-vs.-sun growing experiments, which dovetail with the science curriculum.

That’s key to Ron Donoho, a third-grade teacher who coordinates those science programs. Amid the gravel paths, stone benches and native grasses, each grade will have its own raised bed to tend.

In addition to exploring such mysteries as photosynthesis and pollination, Donoho hopes to renew a basic connection to the outdoors.

“We want kids to be nature-oriented,” he said. “A lot of kids in town don’t have that option, because so many families just don’t garden anymore.”

A mix of dirt, water and sunshine should have universal appeal for kids who bring widely varying challenges to school each day. Northview, Manhattan’s largest elementary school, serves a 40 percent minority population, and for many kids English is a second language. More than half of the students qualify for reduced-cost or free lunches, about the same number as participate in the after-school program.

“I hope for a space where kids can see the connection between their curriculum and what goes on outdoors in nature,” Aistrup said. “Growing a bean in a little pot in the classroom isn’t quite the same as being out in the dirt and the sun.”

Creating a space that will satisfy everyone’s expectations is a complex mission.

“What designers do is to give form to all these needs and help the project move forward,” Kingery-Page said. “I’m especially excited about this garden because it will give so many kids a chance to connect with the native plants and limestone of the prairie.”

 “We were struggling,” Teener said of the layouts she and Donoho attempted before Kingery-Page volunteered to help. “I’m a grant writer.”

“And I’m a science teacher,” Donoho added. “Katie gave the project a really artistic look.”

In the first week of March, the garden started to take shape. Chaffee, who has donated hours of planning, brought in his Master Landscape crew to grade the site, install a limestone bench and place the limestone boulders and post rocks called for in Kingery-Page’s design.

 More than 20 neighbors and members of pupils’ families volunteered at that first work session, and K-State students pitched in too. In addition to efforts by the Chimes junior honorary, landscape architecture students Kent Burnham, Jonathan Ryan, Ian Scherling and Dan Smith participated, along with associate professor Lorn Clement.

Other heavy lifting includes edging paths with limestone blocks, building raised beds, tamping gravel and moving dirt.

Such tasks require adult volunteers and expert supervision. But Northview pupils will get their hands dirty too. This year’s Northview Field Days, May 4-5, will be devoted to planting the brand-new garden with donated material, and the kids will be in the thick of it.

They learn more than a science lesson through such hands-on participation, according to Teener. They learn to take pride in their work.

“The whole idea of the garden is to get kids involved,” she said, “so that they can say, ‘I did that; that was my idea.’ “

K-State volunteers are giving those ideas form, and a future.

To view a drawing of the project and the volunteers at work, go to:
http://capd.ksu.edu/gallery/news/2009-growth-potential/

For more information, contact:
Katie Kingery-Page, 785.532.5371
Diane Potts, 785.532.1090