Forget May flowers. McGlone Elementary School kids are hoping April’s showers bring a crop of carrots, or maybe potatoes. And they very well might — just not this year.
That lesson in patience is the first in a full curriculum on gardening, nutrition and physical exercise for the 560 students at the Montbello school. It got started Friday afternoon, when hard-hat-wearing fifth-graders picked up golden shovels to break ground for a new playground and urban farm on what is now a pea-gravel wasteland.
When the garden does bloom next spring — after about a year of prepping the neglected soil — it will be the first Denver Public Schools schoolyard garden to produce fruits and vegetables that land on school cafeteria tables.
Leo Lesh, head of food services for DPS, said he’ll buy as much produce as the farm offers.
“It’s going to be awesome!” said McGlone first-grader Madison Citron. “It’s going to give us new things to do, new things to see.”
Madison said she couldn’t wait to help out with the garden. “I like to eat carrots,” she said. By the time those carrots come in a year from now, Madison just might even have some front teeth to bite into them with.
The garden, which will include a greenhouse, as well as a smaller garden for students to tend, is the result of a collaboration between DPS, Colorado Organic Producers Association (COPA), Sprout City Farms and the University of Colorado Denver’s architecture department.
UC Denver architecture students designed the garden and playground, and a DPS bond, along with grant money and community donations yet to be collected will pay the roughly $450,000 cost of the project.
Meg Caley, one of Sprout City’s urban farmers, said the first crops to go in will likely be root vegetables, which will do best in the untested soil.
Over the past 12 years, the architecture program at UC Denver has helped create 55 other “Learning Landscapes.”
Lois Brink, director of the Learning Landscapes program, said McGlone was chosen partly because of its immense, unused grounds. In all, the new playground, greenhouse and gardens will stretch over 3 acres.
Lesh, meanwhile, hopes the idea of growing food for school tables catches on. “The ideal would be for every school to have a school garden we could use,” he said.
“It’s a good thing for kids to know where their food comes from.”
Karen Auge: 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com
