Kids!

My day job is leading Greenville county's parks and rec department. We received a grant from Clemson's 4-H to create children's demonstration and teaching gardens in our community centers after school programs. Here's a couple pics|

Fun! Do you get to teach the classes?

All I can say is GOOD!

That is beyond awesome! !

Look at all those happy smiling faces out enjoying the sunshine and God's good earth. Grant money well spent, I say!

When children are engaged in gardening - it's wonderful! They will see the result of their work, to study care. And they will know that potatoes are growing in the ground, not on a potato tree.

No, I don't do the teaching, our counsellors do. Each one had to go through 10 hours of online training and participate in a day long seminar. After the seminar all 5 sites will get 2 raised beds, plus soil, seeds, plants and a vermicompost bin. An extension master gardener will also volunteer at each site to help ensure success.
We have gotten other grants as well, so each site will have from 6-8 beds. They are also teaching organic, no till and sheet mulch.
In addition to that we getting requests for community garden sites in our parks, so that's next.
The county has some huge piles of two year old wood chips, collected after storms, so guess where that is going!
It's really great to be involved in starting gardening programs as I wind down my career. As I was researching community gardens, I found many parks and rec departments all across the country that had community garden programs.

I was once a community gardener, 'Tiger.

It was fun to have the company. The parks department paid almost no attention to us. Sometimes, that made me a little uncomfortable as folks took things in their own hands. We were fortunate to involve a university group in cleanups on 2 occasions.

Storage yards were nearby. I finally asked about wood chips and hauled some down the hill for all my paths.

A near "wild-state" park was next door. That led to some two-legged theft but the bigger problem was the 4-legged critters. Deer only showed up once but that nearly took out my tomatoes for that year. A great big problem was the marmots.

You might know, groundhogs are Marmota monax.
Marmots are Marmota caligata. They are bigger than groundhogs but, I imagine, cause the same trouble. We were allowed to set up fences but not even to "harass" them . Only for a few months would a well-tended fence work; then they would find a way into our gardens. In the 6 years I was there, I personally trained them to eat any number of garden vegetables ...

Mostly tho', we had a pretty good time and a fair amount of good food from the experience .

Steve

@Mauldintiger good for you..... wish more children have the experience on growing things, over getting on social media apps and wasting their time....