Planting the seeds of ‘Victory’

CENTER LINE — It’s a garden party in the Center Line Public Schools district.

District Superintendent Joseph Haynes — a gardener at heart — is in the process of establishing a community garden on school grounds known as the Victory Garden.

The garden will beautify an empty space behind Center Line High School and the Center Line Administration Building on Arsenal Street.

“I keep saying it’s a three-year plan before it really looks nice,” Haynes said.

Representatives from Michigan State University Extension have participated in the project, and the Macomb County Department of Planning & Economic Development provided funding.

On May 30 and June 2, the district’s 400 first and second grade students from Crothers, Peck and Roose elementary schools visited the garden to learn more about it and to plant vegetable plants.

The activity tied into their science curriculum. The garden is designed to engage the students in hands-on learning, sustainability, water conservation, food sourcing, nutrition, responsibility and teamwork.

During their field trip to the Victory Garden, the students visited three areas. One stop was inside the administration building where Liz Duran, an MSU Extension youth program coordinator for the Children and Youth Institute, set up a project and talked to the students about the importance of pollination.

“We would not have fruits, vegetables or flowers without pollination,” Duran said.

Duran and the students also talked about the different pollinators that include birds, bees, butterflies, wind and moths.

“Today, we are going to focus on butterflies as a pollinator,” said Duran, adding there are 151 different kinds of butterflies. She has her own butterfly garden in which she tracks butterflies that visit.

During the activity, the students used party favors to blow cornmeal to simulate what happens during pollination.

“This is what butterflies suck nectar and sap up with,” Duran said. Duran also pointed out the role bats play in pollination.

“Bats have a bad reputation, but they are very useful to our environment,” she told the students. “They eat thousands and thousands of mosquitoes you don’t want in your backyard.”

The students also spent time at “The Great Taste Adventure” where Archis Suneetee Vinay, an MSU Extension community nutrition instructor, discussed the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables. With help from the school district’s elementary instructional coach Nicole Pelczarski, the students tried various fruits and vegetables, including apples, cherries, green beans, blackberries, squash, zucchini, peaches, cucumbers and more. With a paper handout, they marked the foods they tried, which ones they liked and which they didn’t. Blackberries, raspberries, zucchini and squash seemed to be the favorite foods among the students.

With different gardening tools, the students helped Haynes plant different vegetables outside, which was their third stop on the visit.

“I think we are going to end up planting 120 different plants,” Haynes said.

On their way to the garden beds, the students walked over the garden’s Thankful Bridge.

“Tradition has it that you have to think of something you are thankful for as you walk over it,” Haynes said.

Haynes also showed the students the area in which a rain garden will grow.

“This is our rain garden. It fills with water and that’s why we have a bridge. All the rain that is collected on our roof goes down those pipes and comes out into here and this floods,” Haynes said. “You see these plants, these plants love mud and water, and they drink it up.”

The Victory Garden also will produce sunflowers, and an orchard with 20 pear, peach, apple and cherry trees, and more. Haynes would like to eventually get a 4-H group going with volunteers helping out.