Community gardening

Last weekend, a group of our teens and adult volunteers made the most of a beautiful sunny Saturday by rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty. Under the watchful eyes of a few master gardeners and urban farmers, they put in three hours of work in the community garden at the Villages at Carver, pulling weeds and prepping the soil for planting in a month or two.

The project was timed to coincide with Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service and represented a first for the current crop of Coaching for Success participants. We’ve had periodic group events dating back to last fall, but this was the first time the teens have come together to volunteer in the community. I’m certain it won’t be the last.

When we first started trying to drum up interest in a volunteer project among our teens, I was pleased to find a high percentage who expressed a willingness to serve. I asked each whether there were any causes—hunger, homelessness, animal welfare, the environment, etc.—that were especially important to her or him. Almost to a person, the response sounded something like this: “Um…well…not really.” The experience left me with the impression that these young people have seldom if ever been asked that question before.

Since our teens didn’t request any particular type of service, we decided on the community gardening project—a tailor-made, ready-to-go opportunity supporting one of our program partners.

 The morning of the project, I overheard a few terrified exclamations as brand-new gardeners unearthed worms and other residents of the soil. And I witnessed a couple of instances of teens working through the new experience by retreating to the familiar territory of cutting up and giving each other a hard time. But I also saw teens enthusiastically applying the facilitators’ instructions and beginning to take pride in their newly acquired skills.

My informal polling of the students that day revealed a subset of the group that is interested in working in the garden on an ongoing basis. (I think the discovery of a few onions left over from the last planting helped—several of the teens couldn’t get over how fresh they smelled.) I’m not sure how this will look going forward, but our hosts offered to let us use one of the garden plots and we’re working on setting up a rotation of committed partnerships to try their hand at raising vegetables this summer.

For some of the teens, this was likely their first and last experience with community gardening. We’ll keep working with these to try and uncover the causes that spark their passion to make a difference. For a few, though, Saturday’s service ignited that spark. It’s early in the season, but I know some seeds were planted in the garden last weekend. Let’s see how they grow.