Garden Stories

by Ellen Korenblat

The children sit on the ground with the sun shining on their faces, biting into fresh, juicy oranges now knowing that this fruit-this bright, delicious globe – is actually stored energy from the sun. This is part of the Sun Story.

Dunbar Garden is as full of stories as it is of sprouting and ripening fruits, grains, vegetables, flowers and herbs. In fact, you could make a story out of just about anything in the garden.

The garden began in 1992 under the leadership of Pratt Remmel, Jr., who was inspired to make use of the edge of a little used urban park when he first noticed it at an event at an adjacent property, the Dunbar Recreation Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Also surrounding the urban lot are a public library, an elementary school and a junior high school.

All of these entities, Remmel imagined, could benefit from a garden that would bring people together for community building and education. Plus, the garden would bring natural beauty to the downtown neighborhood. So, in the searing heat of an Arkansas summer, Remmel, an assistant and 14 at-risk youth who had qualified for summer work through a poverty program, built Dunbar Garden literally from the ground up.

That fall, Remmel gained permission to integrate the garden program into the curriculum of Dunbar Junior High School and Gibbs Magnet Elementary. Between the two schools, 1,000 students can access the creative and experiential learning in the garden with just a short walk.

Within a few years, all the high school science classes were visiting the garden once every nine weeks and every student at the elementary school was required to learn from the garden as well. Because the elementary school is a magnet school that draws students from throughout the city, some parents were applying to send their children there because of the garden experience and what it adds to the students' education.

The smell of fresh basil (combining with garden garlic, oil, local pecans and cheese to make mouth-watering pesto - all part of the Pesto Story); the sound of the wind and of chickens stirring in their coop, the first-time taste of a muscadine grape that twists up the face with its unfamiliar presence, the spirit of cooperation among classmates as they dig, plant and water together and the feeling of success as they harvest their delightful bounty-these are the tangible offerings of this outdoor classroom. This is part of what students don't get inside, behind their desks, listening intently and working independently.

The Wheat Story
When you ask most fourth-graders where bread comes from, or pizza dough, or cereal, they will probably tell you, "The store!" But children at Gibbs Elementary will likely tell you about how it all begins - from broadcasting the seed to watering, harvesting, threshing and winnowing to grinding, mixing and baking.

As the children engage in the process of growing wheat, they learn much more than how to plant seeds and water them. They learn vocabulary: "How many of you," the instructor might ask, "have heard of a television broadcast or broadcast journalism? Did you know the terms come from broadcasting seeds like you're doing now?" The children may go back to their classrooms and learn what are the wheat-producing countries of the world, how wheat and crop failures have played a role in world conflicts or what role wheat has played in trade.

"There are an infinity of lessons in the garden," says Remmel. "Children learn things about soil structure, plant parts, weather, geography, history, where water comes from – you can never run out of things in the garden to teach that relate to the classroom – but they learn it in a very different way than just sitting there listening to the words."

The Corn Story
The Corn Story begins in the fall as the children hear the centuries-old Cherokee tale of how corn came to be. From there, they learn about Native American history, culture and folklore. They also learn that years ago, and still today, if a family wanted to grow corn each year, they had to save a portion of the corn for seed for the next year's crop. And so the children are given seeds to save until spring when the Corn Story picks up again.

When it's time to plant the corn, some children inevitably will have lost their seeds. But it's okay, they are provided with more. The seed is an indigenous variety of Indian corn that has been grown in Arkansas' Ozark Mountains for hundreds of years. Dunbar Garden acquired the seed from a friend who got it from a man who had been growing the corn and saving the seed to keep the variety alive.

And as each passed the gift on to another, as in Heifer's livestock projects, Dunbar Garden passed on the gift, too – back to the original person who had since lost his crop, and therefore all his seed. By sharing seeds, the variety was not lost to history.

Corn shoots are fairly dramatic, producing two-inch sprouts in a short period of time. The children witness this with great satisfaction, beaming with success. But again, they'll have to wait before the story concludes. During their summer break, the corn continues to grow, ripen and dry. When the children return for the next school year, they are amazed that the seeds they saved, planted and watered, are now six-foot-tall cornstalks.

During garden outings, the students pick, shuck and grind the corn. Then, they are rewarded with cornbread made from the corn they planted, often prepared right on the spot. It is the culmination of a powerful lesson about the origin of food.

The Next Chapter
More than a school garden, Dunbar Garden is truly a community garden. The produce harvested each year is given away to food pantries, homeless shelters and the senior citizens who meet each day at the Dunbar Recreation Center. Flowers from the garden adorn the public library checkout desk. Neighbors and community members get to know each other as they garden small rental plots.

The garden has inspired cooperation from several businesses and organizations including a national grocery chain which refrigerates the wheat bundles over the summer so the school children can continue their study of wheat, a restaurant which provided dinner for the summer youth program in exchange for fresh table arrangements and a continuing education group that offers classes for adults at the garden.

The nonprofit group AUGER (Arkansas Urban Gardening Educational Resources, Inc.) grew out of the Dunbar Garden Project to provide a network for community gardens and help further the overall goals of those gardens. Heifer has been working with AUGER through another community garden in Little Rock, Inner City Future Net.

Heifer is offering similar assistance to Dunbar Garden by providing chickens and worms to integrate into the garden's educational and job training programs. Heifer's resources are concentrated on the LifeSkills program that prepares low-income youth for employment by offering training in production, marketing and sales of agricultural products.

AUGER Executive Director John Kepner is enthusiastic about the partnership: "Heifer is known throughout the world as an innovative and effective partner for green, grassroots economic development. This is a tremendous opportunity for young people in our town."

For more information about Dunbar Garden, Inner City Future Net and AUGER, visit their web site: www.auger-ar.org.