Sunset community helps garden grow

By Kara Hansen

The West Linn Tidings, Jul 2, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

VERN UYETAKE / West Linn Tidings

Jenny Palmer and her son Bennett Palmer, 3, pull weeds from the Sunset Primary School garden. The garden has seen a jump in the number of people who help maintain it.

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Something in Sunset Primary School’s garden is growing faster than the pea shoots, Hood strawberries and other produce bursting from its 11 raised beds.

Volunteer support for the program has experienced a growth spurt this year, with as many as 45 families taking on weeklong shifts in the garden, just west of the school. From mid-June to the start of school this fall, they’ll pull weeds, double-check the irrigation system and tidy up the beds.

In exchange, they’ll be able to harvest a bounty of produce.

“It’s a community garden,” said Kathy Ira, the school wellness and physical education teacher the past 28 years. “People will take care of the garden, and the garden will take care of them.”

It has taken strong community support to revive the outdoor garden after it fell idle one year. In 2001, the Sunset parent-teacher organization supplied money to build raised beds, which contain about 6,600 square feet of gardening space, according to the school.

In fall 2005, a staff committee planted the seeds for a school-wide program that would integrate garden lessons into every grade level. That program began in early 2006 with the hiring of a garden director.

However, the program ran into trouble when the garden director quit. There was a year or so when plants didn’t produce much.

But then Ira took action.

“I realized if I didn’t do something, we weren’t going to have a garden,” she said.

Ira, who has a penchant for produce but claims to have been a picky eater as a child, said the garden helps students learn about nutrition and makes fruits and vegetables more accessible.

“I’ve been talking and singing to kids about nutrition for years,” she said. “Here, they can taste peas fresh from the garden; how many kids have that opportunity?”

The school hired Marcelle Gonzalez, a former AmeriCorps volunteer at the school district’s Center for Research in Environmental Sciences and Technologies, as the newest garden director. With her knowledge of plants and growing cycles and Ira’s passion for the project, the two mapped out a plan for the growing season.

A $1,000 PTSO stipend bought a load of fertile dirt and a cloche, a dome that protects seedlings from the elements, allowing them to develop in the ground earlier.

Keeping cost in mind, Ira grew a bunch of plant starts from seeds. A Sunset parent’s family in Keizer donated many of young plants as well. Another parent made wooden signs to mark each crop.

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