This fall, senior Gavi Mallory inherited a little more than $200 from a past student’s fundraising to build a garden on school grounds. Neither of the two greenhouses on the school’s property had been used for gardening in years, and Science Curriculum Coordinator Ed Wiser told Mallory there was not enough space on campus to plant a garden. With little funding, no definite space and no club or organization to plan the garden with, Mallory faced a seemingly insurmountable roadblock.
So how did Mallory get the ball rolling with the Garden Initiative, an organization that plans to install raised garden beds on school property this spring?
The answer is simple: she reached out to the communities around her.
Mallory has reached out to the Social Justice Program’s Food Justice Committee, the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA), and a composting project orchestrated by cooking teacher Judy Saler to help her break ground this April.
After months of unfruitful searching for on-campus green space, Mallory contacted Erin Gallentine, director of the Brookline Parks and Open Spaces department. The Garden Initiative plans to break ground on the lawn of the Tappan Street side of the main building, just outside the cafeteria windows.
Mallory and members of the Food Justice Committee are in the process of writing grants to raise money for the restoration of the two on-campus greenhouses and Mallory’s proposed raised garden beds.
Junior Jessica Lu is one of these grant writers. She joined the Garden Initiative because she believes food justice was an overlooked issue in Brookline.
“Most people think that because we live in such a privileged area, getting healthy food and even food in general is not a problem. That isn’t the case for some families,” said Lu.
Through her efforts to fundraise for the Garden Initiative and the Food Justice Committee, Lu hopes to build a program that could provide healthy food to people who are may lack in this area.
The Garden Initiative has also considered reaching out to the 21st Century Fund for additional funding, according to social studies teacher Roger Grande, the Social Justice Program’s adviser.
At a meeting in December, Grande proposed the idea that the Garden Initiative could develop into a program similar to the copy center in the sense that students would be paid to work during school. This type of program could also target students of lower-income families who might not have access to such nutritious food otherwise, said Grande.
Another idea proposed was the possibility of supplying portions of the garden’s produce to the cafeteria. Though Mallory is excited by this proposal, she is unsure that this supply chain will be implemented any time soon.
A possible collaboration with the Students Helping Older People program (SHOP) has been discussed as well. SHOP is a program in which students purchase groceries for elderly townspeople.
The Garden Initiative is considering a connection that would involve students delivering fresh produce from the school garden to SHOP’s beneficiaries.
Mallory and her 35-person Garden Initiative will plant seedlings inside the school’s greenhouses and then transfer them to raised beds, which they plan to build in March at a gardening workshop held by NOFA.
Mallory and her peers have reached out to numerous local organizations in their efforts to kickstart the Garden Initiative, and they plan to give back to the community that has provided them with such support.
“I think Brookline is kind of a divided community. We know people who are at our high school and we know our parents, but there’s also a bunch of senior centers on Centre Street by Coolidge Corner,” said Mallory. “I think a garden is an amazing way to connect with people in our community. I hope that the people who help out in or benefit from the garden connect with new groups of people when they get involved.”
Ben Berke can be contacted at [email protected].
