THE FOLLOWING IS A NEWS-GAZETTE STORY BY JENNIFER BAILEY
ABOVE: Zion Reed holds a pepper at the Carle Riverfront Community Garden in Danville
DANVILLE — North Ridge Middle School and Project Success student Zion Reed, who turns 13 today, couldn’t believe how small a growing watermelon was when he found it hiding beneath the vines and leaves at the Carle Riverfront Community Garden on Thursday.
Then he found a little bigger one that also still has a lot more growing to do.
Reed was weeding the garden beds as he also found a small pepper.
He said he’d already tried a cherry from the garden, but most of the other fruits and vegetables “were not edible yet.”
He can’t wait to try more.
Reed is part of a group of youths with Project Success who have been visiting the garden twice a week this summer to tend to it.
It was about a year ago that Carle had a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Riverfront Community Garden at the corner of Logan Avenue and Madison and Chandler streets, at the northwest corner of Carle at The Riverfront medical campus.
The garden is part of the Vermilion County Community Health Collaborative, funded by a grant from the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. Heavenly Square Grocery and community health workers also are part of the collaborative.
Funding for the garden space also came from the Julius W. Hegeler II Foundation to help build it out, Danville Area Community College helped with the design of the garden beds, the University of Illinois Extension is assisting with education and curriculum, Project Success is giving the manpower with the youths, and CRIS transportation is bringing the students to the site, said Carle physician Dr. Timothy Meneely.
Meneely visited the garden Thursday to see the full garden beds and progress.
“They’ve just done amazing work, haven’t they,” he said. “The kids have done a great job in getting everything planted.”
He said they are going to have a lot of tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables to share with the community.
Meneely said the garden is important. It helps the youths and families who’ve not had the opportunity to learn how to garden and take care of one, to grow healthy food.
“Access to healthy food is one of the problems we have in this country and certainly in this area,” he said.
He said after teaching the youths how to garden, next is canning.
A nutritionist with the U of I Extension will work with the Project Success students this fall on what to do with the produce.
Danville Mayor Rickey Williams Jr., who lives two doors down from the community garden, stopped by to talk to the youths and told them they should give themselves a round of applause for the work they’d been doing with the garden.
On Thursday, the Project Success youths also had fun painting stepping stones to decorate the garden with bright colors.
South View Upper Elementary School Project Success Site Coordinator John Rankin said the garden has really come along.
“I’ve never grown a watermelon before now,” Rankin too said.
Danville High School and North Ridge Middle School Project Success Site Coordinator Joanna Pickering said Carle reached out to the U of I Extension and then the Extension reached out to Project Success about getting the students involved.
They thought 5th-through-12th grade was the best to work on it, Pickering said. The students learn about community service which is important for them to feel connected to their community and be proud of it and part of it, but they also learn that growing a garden can be easy, Pickering said.
The students had been coming to the garden once a week during the last part of the school year, and now they’re there twice a week during the summer. On average, about 20 students each week having been taking care of the garden during the summer.
“A lot of these kids, they have food deserts where they live, so they don’t have stores where it’s easy to just go get fresh produce,” Pickering said. “So, this is something that we could do, theoretically, in a small space.”
They can garden in pots and beds and they don’t need five acres of land, she said.
“They’ve really enjoyed it,” she added.
The DHS students started in April. They took classes sponsored by 4-H, U of I Extension about how to identify plants, what type of plants pair together and what can grow next to each other. Then they chose what plants to put in the garden and did the layouts.
“It really, really took root, so to speak,” Pickering said when the students saw the barren garden boxes, pulled the weeds, planted the plants and checked on them.
She said the South View students also have loved gardening. There are student helpers who always want to water the plants.
The students were really excited to pick the cherries and were going to make cherry pie filling, but Pickering said pie cherries are super sour.
The students also pulled off banana peppers and tasted them.
“This is just like what you get in the store, but you grew it,” Pickering said they told them. The students then made that connection.
In addition to talking to the students about the importance of weeding, they also talked about how flowers in the garden help with bees and pollination.
The pear trees were doing good, but they had four or five pears grouped together and they had to thin them out to grow, Pickering said.
The students also have learned about making salsa, using strawberries and herbs to season and on pizza.
Fifteen-year-old Chaise Ferguson said when she tried a cherry it was really sour.
“I want to try a pear,” she said.
Pickering said the students have made sidewalk art around the garden and have been making identification signs for the growing fruits and vegetables. The neighbors also have been great, keeping an eye on the site, she added.
After the summer, they’ll go back to the school schedule and maintain the garden as necessary, Pickering said.
The students and their families will take some of the produce and recipes home. There could be a community table for additional families to take the leftover produce, and they could distribute the fruits and vegetables through food banks.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the kids,” Pickering said. “They have done an excellent job.”
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