As members of the Columbia Heights Youth Club turn the soil at Girard Children’s Community Garden, I hold out my hand to accept a squirming tangle of earthworms. Girls aged 7 to 13 come to the garden, located near the corner of 15th and Girard Streets NW, on Monday afternoons to take part in one of the many programs led by City Blossoms, a non-profit organization that teaches young people in DC and Baltimore through creative food projects.
Along with other children’s groups who come to the Girard garden throughout the week, these girls take part in all stages of growing food. They plant, tend, harvest, cook, and eat fresh, organically grown vegetables.
Along the way, they have the chance to get up close and personal with the critters living in the soil.
On a crisp November afternoon, the girls use their hands and small trowels to dig into one corner of the garden and tuck colorful pansies into the moist, dark earth. Each discovery of another worm sends them into squeals of disgust and delight.
Squatting among the girls, teacher Lola Bloom, City Blossoms’ co-founder and director of curriculum development, explains the crucial role of worms in the garden—in terms that resonate immediately with youth.
“What’s your favorite food?” she asks.
“Pizza!” the girls chorus back.
“Okay, do you know where the tomatoes in pizza sauce grow?” She tells them how all of the foods we love to eat come from soil enriched by worm castings.
“Worm poo-poo!” the girls giggle.
Celebrating the close of its first growing season in 2009, the Girard Children’s Community Garden oozes kid-friendliness. Hand-painted signs welcome visitors, share important reminders (“Don’t get hurt in the dirt”), and recommend culinary and medicinal uses for herbs. Jack-o-lanterns nestle among red and orange zinnias. A five-foot-long bug sculpture constructed of colorful glass and metal crouches over the herb plot and invites little ones to hide out under its belly.
Children are encouraged to take ownership of the space and to think of it “not as a place just for work to be done, but a place for play,” Lola says. Since the garden shares its perimeter with a playground, “kids make a point of coming in and independently watering, planting seeds, checking on plants, and tasting herbs and vegetables as part of their overall playground experience.”
And because City Blossoms integrates not just garden work, but also cooking and arts into its curriculum, neighborhood children can stay connected to this spot throughout the year. Winter activities include creating natural dyes from garden plants, tracking the growth of bulbs through written and physical exercises, and concocting meals from winter greens like Swiss chard and kale.
City Blossoms hopes to spark childrens’ interest so they’ll “be more creative and explore not just when they are in school but during their free time,” said Lola. Arts projects also help kids develop a sense of their place within the neighborhood. “It is a way for them to have a voice in the community,” she said. “The projects they work on are public and receive tons of positive feedback from families and neighbors.”
The opportunity to connect with adults and gain recognition from the broader community is key to keeping kids engaged with food in the long term. “Give them a space to showcase their own recipes and creations with the larger community,” she suggests. Lola envisions a child-driven food festival or even a restaurant where all the dishes are grown and created by kids engaged in transforming DC’s foodscape.
Brynn Grumstrup Slate spent two seasons growing vegetables and blogging for the Local Food Project at Airlie. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Urban Environmental Leadership.
City Blossoms is a very cool program run by very cool people. The great thing they add, in addition to the art, is that they work closely with and are embedded in schools. At Centro Nia, which is nearby and whom City Blossoms has a close relationship with, every kid gardens! They recognize that understanding food and where it comes from is central to the learning process.
Carl Rollins
Brynn,
Thanks for this post! It makes me wish I were a kid so that I could be a participant in City Blossoms!
Since I live in Columbia Heights, I went there for a community pot luck last month. It was wonderful.
Thanks for reading! You may be able to “be a kid again” by volunteering to help out in the garden. Check out the City Blossoms link to get to the staff contact info. I don’t know what their need is currently, but I know they have appreciated having volunteers in the garden for classes and events.