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Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Cumberland Elementary School students (from left to right) Karen Crawford, Matthew Douglas and Sam Ragey pick radishes in their school garden. '[The kids] get really excited putting their hands in the dirt and digging up the soil,' Cumberland's garden coordinator, Natascha Van der Meulen, says.

How does a garden grow? . . .with grants and donations all in a row

By Justin Berton

There is a growing rumor around town that the kids at Cumberland Elementary School like their vegetables. According to fourth-grader Olivia Hung, the rumors are true.

"Broccoli, lettuce, radishes," she said, listing the veggies and greens she likes to eat.

"But I've never eaten broccoli uncooked before," she said, pointing to a raised bed of growing greens in a garden box that she and her classmates planted.

Hung and the other 300 students at Cumberland were awarded the Youth Garden Grant from the National Garden Association, a $750 grant that will help with additional supplies to continue the expansion of the garden.

Currently, the garden holds everything from sugar-snap peas and bok choy to tulips and roseprims.

Garden coordinator Natascha Van der Meulen, who authored the grant application, said the garden has the children's fascination growing faster than the wild patch of winter wheat.

"It's important the children get to see where the food they eat comes from," she said. "They get really excited putting their hands in the dirt and digging up the soil."

Help with maintaining and expanding the garden has been cropping up all over. The city of Sunnyvale donated mounds of compost and the bins to hold it.

Fifth-grader Nichole Kinderman didn't dig too deep to explain the purpose of compost. "It stinks," she said.

The Santa Clara Home Composters donated a big wooden bin that holds a gooey mix full of stale food, clumpy dirt, shredded newspapers and slimy worms. "The worm farm," fifth-grader Elise Gaudette commented, "is very cool."

Almost as cool as the winter-wheat patch, the kids said. The students plan to harvest, thresh and grind the wheat into flour so they can bake bread before the end of the school year.

Van der Meulen said the next project she'll start is a butterfly garden at the front of the school. "We hope to have this area crawling with milkweed to attract the monarchs," she added.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, January 28, 1998.
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