Lowry Elementary

Garden Leader: Lisa Emerson – lemerson8@msn.com

Parents at Lowry Elementary have worked with Slow Food Denver and Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) to build several gardens on the school grounds. The “Serenity Garden” is at the north entrance of the school and was completed in 2007 and the “Victory Garden”, a traditional vegetable garden, was completed in 2008. The Serenity Garden is designed as an outdoor classroom and teaching garden. It contains a circular seating area in the center, surrounded by colorful and fragrant perennials and trees. Mosaic benches, designed by the school’s art director, Gary Bloom, ring the circular seating area. The Serenity garden contains sensory, alpine, fairy and bird/butterfly themed sections. Just this spring the school installed a new fruit orchard, which includes 8 fruit trees: two cherry, pear, peach and apple.

The Victory Garden has been designed with a two-fold purpose – - to use the gardening experience to extend classroom teaching through hands on, interdisciplinary learning, and to improve the eating and health habits of the school’s children. The Victory Garden consists of six raised beds measuring 6 feet by 15 feet, plus additional at-grade beds for sprawling plants such as pumpkins. The garden also includes compost bins to which school families contribute their kitchen scraps.

Background Lowry Elementary School is located in the redeveloped Lowry Neighborhood of Southeast Denver; a prime example of urban renewal. Formerly the Lowry Air Force Base, Lowry is now a combination of residential, educational, commercial, open space and recreational space surrounding a local public school, Lowry Elementary. Lowry housing includes single family homes, affordable town homes, and two subsidized transitional housing complexes run by Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, per the requirements of federal base closure legislation. The student body at Lowry Elementary School, which opened its doors in 2002, reflects the neighborhood’s unusual economic and racial diversity. The demographics of Lowry’s neighborhood school are a wonderful ethnic and socioeconomic blend, in stark contrast to the typical elementary school with a more homogenized student base. Lowry’s student body includes a total of 450 students, made up of 46% Caucasian, 28% African-American, 10% Latino and 16% other. In addition, 42% of the student body qualifies for federal free or reduced-priced lunch, a standard indicator of poverty.

Late in the summer of 2006, several Lowry families joined together to create a garden program at the school. With the enthusiastic involvement of the school’s Principal, Cari Riedlin, they donated seed money and expertise, created a steering committee and a plan. This committee, comprised of parents and teachers, developed designs for the gardens, and Denver Urban Gardens, in collaboration with school family volunteers, built the Lowry Victory Garden in the spring of 2008. The Victory Garden was built with two main objectives: to extend the classroom by using the gardening experience to teach, and to improve the eating and health habits of the school’s children. Each grade has its own 6′ x 15′ raised plot that can be integrated with curriculum as dictated by the grade level, district learning goals, and teachers’ visions. The Victory Garden also includes a composting area where kitchen scraps and garden waste can be composted and reused to improve the soil. We have found the gardens and composting to be powerful, tangible and fun teaching tools.

During our first growing season, we started seeds in the classrooms with the help of Andy Nowak and Slow Foods. We had success with the seedlings – the kids had fun, and the seedlings overall did wonderfully. We worked with the kids to transplant them into larger pots for the school plant sale or into the garden. The produce was abundant and from August through October we were able to share fresh veggies with school families. This year we hope to formalize the veggie-share concept to provide fresh vegetables to school families in need. Working with our Principal as well as our Colorado Coalition for the Homeless Counselor, Patricia Vaughn, we will identify families within the school community who need assistance. Each family receiving food from the veggie-share will be asked to volunteer a minimum of 1 hour in the school garden. We hope to involve these families in our garden program so that they will feel a personal connection to the project and perhaps learn a little about gardening along the way. Any extra produce will be sold at the school’s farmers’ markets, with profits returning to the garden program.

Lowry Elementary School was awarded an Esurace GreenWorks! PLT grant in Spring, 2009, which will enable us to start the Veggie Share program. We will be installing coldframes during April and planting seeds and seedlings with the students in April and May. For Earth Day, on April 22nd, we are planning a big day of planting in the garden.

We welcome volunteer assistance with any of our projects. Please contact Lisa Emerson at lemerson8@msn.com if you are interested in helping, or would like more information. To date, The Lowry Victory Garden has been a success for the students of Lowry Elementary. We hope to expand this program to make better use of our gardens during the school year to teach the students not only about life science, agriculture, and healthy lifestyles, but also about community service.