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Community Corner

Organic Gardening Taking Root in Dunwoody Cluster Schools

Environmental student group envisions major changes in ways children are taught.

Note: The informational meeting about Grow Dunwoody has been moved to Wednesday evening (it had been scheduled for Tuesday but has since been changed).

A loose-knit coalition of parents, students, teachers and community organizations is seeking to establish and maintain sustainable organic gardening programs at the eight schools in the Dunwoody cluster.

One of the groups in the coalition, Grow Dunwoody, a student-led environmental organization that has its origins at Dunwoody High School, is attempting to serve as an umbrella organization that would coordinate the efforts among all of the entities.

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Grow Dunwoody has the ambitious goal of enhancing the quality of the science, wellness and special needs education curriculum in grades K-12. If successful, the curriculum changes would produce renewable resources in classrooms and the community and create sustainable practices and values in the student bodies at each of the schools.

According to information distributed by the Grow Dunwoody organizers, the group includes the administration, teachers and faculty at all eight schools within the Dunwoody cluster; professors and students at Georgia Perimeter College; and several organizations in the community. 

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The student leaders of Grow Dunwoody hope to achieve their goals by making the curriculum more interactive and hands-on. Their vision is to reconstruct the way that students are taught.

They believe that part of the way to make that happen is by incorporating community organizations into classroom education and connecting the schools in the cluster though the organic gardens. Ultimately, their goal is for the gardens to integrate the schools into the community through such organizations and institutions as the Dunwoody Nature Center, the National Wildlife Federation, the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Georgia Perimeter College and Brook Run Park. 

The students say that more than 7,000 students would benefit each year from the Grow Dunwoody program they hope to establish. They say that the costs to establish the program would be less than $7 per student and would be about $1.25 per year per student to maintain it. They don’t say how the costs would be paid, but say they have received affirmation for their group in a letter of support from the Dunwoody city manager and a proclamation signed by the mayor.

The public is invited to an informational meeting Wednesday evening, September 13 to learn more about Grow Dunwoody and its goals for organic gardens and the students’ plans to enhance the curriculum at schools in the Dunwoody cluster. The meeting will be held from 6:30-7:30 p.m. in the Dunwoody High School auditorium. For more information about Grow Dunwoody, please visit www.GrowDunwoody.com.

The eight schools in the Dunwoody cluster include Dunwoody High School and the schools that feed into it. The feeder schools are six elementary schools (Austin, Chesnut Charter, Dunwoody, Hightower, Kingsley Charter and Vanderlyn) and a middle school (Peachtree Charter).

Three of these schools, Chesnut Charter Elementary, Dunwoody Elementary and Dunwoody High, were represented at a meeting last week to discuss the organic gardening initiatives at their schools. They were joined at the meeting by representatives of two other schools – Dunwoody Springs Elementary and the Elaine Clark Center, a special-needs school where the Christ Child Society of Atlanta has started an organic, sensory-edible garden. The meeting was hosted by the School Garden Team of the Community Garden and was held in the main greenhouse at Brook Run Park.

Start-up garden organizations such as Grow Dunwoody sometimes look to the Community Garden for guidance or assistance because it is an established organic garden whose membership includes veteran gardeners and a professional agricultural/garden consultant. Community Garden members also have experience in community outreach and food-to-table initiatives.

The efforts of Grow Dunwoody, however, are bigger and more complicated than the Community Garden could take on as a coordinating function, according to Don Converse, the newly elected chairman of the Community Garden. Getting involved with all these school projects is really out of the scope of not only our mission but our capabilities at this point in our existence, Converse said. The Community Garden recently celebrated the second anniversary of its founding on Aug. 23, 2009.

However, Converse added that the Community Garden can provide some resources, such as being open for visits and making garden members available to answer questions. He encouraged the school representatives attending the Brook Run meeting to send him a letter of understanding so the Garden could determine what it might be able to do to respond to individual requests for advice or assistance.

The School Garden Team, one of a number of Garden outreach and support teams that help the Community Garden achieve its mission, is trying to assist the schools where it can.

Team volunteers, for example, will oversee harvests and fall plantings in the organic garden at Vanderlyn Elementary School during the next several weeks. This weekend, they made soil amendments to vegetable beds outside kindergarten classrooms at Dunwoody Elementary School.

Another gardening project that began at Dunwoody Elementary this weekend was the installation of ornamental plantings on a patio set aside for teachers outside the library. An herb bed beside the patio will be refurbished and teachers and parents will be able snip herbs for their home use once the plants are established. At this time, schools are not allowed to serve food  grown on their campuses in the school cafeterias.

The community will be able to see the spruced-up areas at Dunwoody Elementary at a fall dinner and book sale on Thursday, Sept. 22.  Jovan Moses, Grounds Committee chair for Dunwoody Elementary, says the event is for family members of students and faculty members and is open to the community as well. The event is being catered by Shane’s Rib Shack, and starts at 6:30 p.m. There is a $6 per person charge.

If you would like to obtain more information about Grow Dunwoody before the Tuesday meeting, please contact Danny Kanso, a Dunwoody High School senior who founded Grow Dunwoody, at  Danny@growdunwoody.com or Robert Galerstein, assistant manager of Grow Dunwoody and a Dunwoody High senior, at Rgalerstein@growdunwoody.com. Questions about the Community Garden should be sent to membership@dunwoodygarden.org.

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