Chapter 1 Building Your Garden Community
IN THIS LESSON
Working with Children
For all of our volunteer projects, children must be supervised by their parents, teachers or guardians. Our job is managing the project, not keeping up with the children.
Smaller children need shorter projects and/or several different tasks with breaks in between. Have them pull weeds, plant seeds, or deadhead flowers (with blunt end safety scissors) for a few minutes.
Make sure to let their grownups know that you don’t expect children to work like older volunteers. We want children to learn & have fun. Give them places to dig in the dirt. Keep a bin of donated toys to pull out during volunteer projects. Encourage them to look for bugs or explore.
Small watering cans and kids-sized tools and gloves make projects more fun and easier for kids’ to participate. Look for end of summer sales of kids garden tools at Target or Wal Mart. Water is heavy, and small one gallon or less watering cans allow children, people with disabilities, and the elderly to participate in your projects.
Back-to-School sales or dollar stores are great sources for blunt end safety scissors. Kids can harvest some produce with scissors, deadhead flowers, and cut flowers for bouquets with them.
Because of the growing popularity of school gardens, you can find a great deal of information about working with youth in the garden. I’ve listed a few links in the resource section. These and many others are listed in our Educator Resource Guide.
Working with Groups
Throughout the year, E.A.T. South works with many different groups including schools, churches, scouts, military, and corporate groups. When these groups have good experiences, they tend to come back year after year.
Groups can get a lot of work done very quickly. For larger groups, recruit additional leaders from your garden to help you manage the project.
Often, the most challenging part of working with large groups is keeping them busy for two hours. Remember that list of projects in your garden journal or log? Have that list handy.
Groups can also help you with projects like painting or building, if the task is appropriate to the volunteers’ age and skill level.
Stage your project. By that, we mean set up the different work stations/locations with the tools and materials you need to get the work done before the volunteers arrive.
Only adults (and teens with a whole lot of supervision and specific parental permission) get to use power tools on a project. You still need to train them, explain how to use tools safely, and make sure they have the items they need to stay safe (ear and eye protection, etc.).
E.A.T. South works with young people in a community center garden through a partnership with an after school program. A partnership with a youth-focused organization is one idea if you want to bring more young people into the garden but have limited staff. For the after school program, E.A.T. South provides a garden lesson or activity a week, and the partnering organization recruits the youth and manages all transportation and communication with families. Note the small watering cans the children are using.
Another group E.A.T. South works with is one of our alumni chapters of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. This AKA chapter supports school gardens in Montgomery and two other counties. Members are encourage to learn new skills by volunteering at E.A.T. South, and E.A.T. South grows plants and provides seeds for the school gardens.
Capital City Master Gardeners managed four beds at the downtown farm. One of the Master Gardener volunteers is a certified Square Foot Gardening Instructor. He used this bed to demonstrate Square Foot Gardening and taught two workshops at E.A.T. South.
A local church group volunteers at E.A.T. South every February. In this picture, they are building a West Maui style compost pile. Organize meaningful volunteer opportunities and make sure volunteers feel thanked and appreciated, and they will come back year after year.