The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
Mrs. Hafner's class third graders and program volunteers show flower planting success. Back row: Donna Anderson, NDSU extension agent; Garden Club members Janice Harildstad, Betty Montgomery and Karen Evans; and Jeff Gale, NDSU extension agent.
The Carrington Runnings store, members from the Carrington Garden Club and the Foster County Extension staff cooperated to use their resources and talents to teach Carrington elementary third grade students about gardening topics. The program was held at the Carrington School.
Runnings donated drop cloths, potting soil, planting containers and bedding plants for each student to take home and grow over the summer.
Rad Nicholson, the Store Manager for Runnings said, "This is an excellent program to capture the interest of youth to get them started in gardening. Hopefully this leads them to have a strong sense of plants and how they fit into the environment and develop conservation-minded young people."
Karen Evens, who is the Carrington Garden Club organizer for the program, explained, "The purposes of the project are to inspire and encourage young people to love and care for the land, to enjoy it's beauty and bounty and learn the joys of gardening. Hopefully, one day students will return that joy in tangible ways to the communities they live in."
Other Carrington Garden Club volunteers who assisted in the project were Janice Harildstad and Betty Montgomery.
Extension agent, Jeff Gale, visited with the students about the importance of soil, highlighting the need to protect the soil from erosion. Gale also outlined the pumpkin growing contest that is being held for Foster County youth this summer.
Donna Anderson, a Master Gardener volunteer and Extension Agent for Foster and Eddy counties and co – organizer of the program, explained to the students how to water, feed and groom their plants to produce bigger and bushier-looking plant containers and how to prepare a container to exhibit at the Foster County Fair, which starts June 21.
Anderson said of the program, "We've been doing this program for a number of years. This has been a nice collaboration between the organizers and partners. We are grateful to have the interest of school administration and teachers and we enjoy the enthusiasm the third graders bring to learning about horticulture. It is the perfect program for this time of year. The students seem quite proud of the containers they planted and that is fun to see."
