Victory for Variety

The Variety School's principal, Jason Fico, is passionate about using the garden space to help teach his special needs students. So when he received a grant to do a garden overhaul he reached out to Star to lend some help in the planning and getting things moving.

We helped plant 8 fruit trees surrounding their already 8 raised garden beds. Spread compost throughout the beds and laid some dripper line irrigation so that they didn't have to rely on hand watering their growing veggies everyday.

Now we've gotten their small, but beautiful greenhouse up and running complete with seed trays and a pump irrigation system. They can now start their own seedlings to transplant into the garden every season.

We've already witnessed first hand how the garden can really help special needs students. When a child is having behavioral issues in class, they can be taken outside to the garden. What started out as a behavioral outburst with a student quickly subsided into calm curiosity when that same student was asked to lend a hand with watering a fruit tree.

Variety plans on opening a farmers market to sell the excess produce that they are growing to fund future school projects and programs.

What's your school planning on growing this spring?