(Additional photograph below.)
To submit school announcements, click on image.
Students at Haverhill’s Gateway Academy celebrated a year of hard work Friday with the formal opening of their Gateway Academy Greenhouse and Gardens.
Gateway Academy Principal Brian Edmunds praised the many benefits of the project during a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“This space is a living testament to what happens when a community believes in its young people,” he said.
Edmunds surveyed the 15 raised beds where young broccoli, snap peas, carrots, peppers and basil are poking through the soil. The cherry tomato plants are already setting tiny fruit and the herbs like sage and basil are ready to be picked. Tiny tendrils of pole beans and cucumbers are reaching out for the string trellises connecting the beds.
As the sun shone down on the garden, Haverhill Mayor Melinda E. Barrett said while she isn’t a gardener herself, she certainly appreciates fresh food and hard work. “I’ve never been much of a gardener myself but I know there is plenty to learn from getting your hands dirty and growing food from seeds to harvest,” she said.
Gateway Academy ninth grader Caileigh Fontanez agreed, saying, “I love to eat so it has been a lot of fun raising our own food.”
Along with the mayor, representatives from state Reps. Andy X. Vargas and Ryan M. Hamilton’s offices presented the school with formal citations.
Edmunds told WHAV the greenhouse and gardens is a project he hoped to create at Gateway when he first arrived. He noted some students had never put their hands in soil, much less considered what it takes to nurture a plant from seed to harvest.
“There was an old greenhouse on the property that was in pretty bad condition,” Edmunds recalled. “I proposed the idea of replacing it to my staff and they embraced it. It just seemed to me that this is the kind of hands-on project that would appeal to the kids. Our farm-to-table cooking classes are among the most popular of our offerings. What better way to enhance those classes than by growing our own food?”
To get the project off the ground Edmunds needed partners so he consulted with Haverhill Public Schools Director of Title I and Community Outreach Dianne Connolly. Soon, offers of help began pouring in. The city contributed $30,000 from its Youth Activities and Mental Health Fund. The school’s maintenance crew cleared the area and helped prepare it. Allison Heartquist, director of the Haverhill Public Private Partnership, also known as HP3, cold called area construction companies. Dellbrook in Quincy, which was finishing up construction of The Beck apartment complex on Railroad Avenue, agreed to send over a crew to dig and pour the concrete foundation and then assemble the 26-foot by eight by 10-foot greenhouse.
Last summer, students assembled wooden raised beds and started a few plants. But rainy weather pushed the full project back until this past spring. Earlier this year, students seeded a few plants directly in the beds and started others in the new greenhouse. Plants were so productive, students presented extras at the recent Haverhill Garden Club Plant Sale.
Even students in John Reeve’s applied math and woodworking classes got involved by making the garden’s sign out of scrap wood.
“The students had to work an equation to figure the curve of ellipse for the lettering and then calculate the spacing between the letters,” Reeve said. Then student artists went to work decorating the sign with colorful plants and flowers.
“It is really fun seeing the kids working out in the garden,” said Danielle Gregoire, educational team facilitator. “It can be hard to motivate some kids but the garden really engages them.”
Edmunds said he has had so much fun with the Gateway Garden, he planted a garden at his home in Lee, N.H. “Yes, even I am learning something about gardening at Gateway Academy,” Edmunds said.
Gateway Academy students, from left, Josiah Matos, Eusebio Alicea, Josue Fernandez, Leilani Hernandez and Caileigh Fontanez give the thumbs up to their new vegetable garden behind the Primrose Street school during ribbon cutting ceremonies. Students have been working for more than a year with the help of community sponsors to build a greenhouse and 15 raised beds. Vegetables and herbs grown in the garden are being used in the school’s Farm-to-Table cooking classes. (WHAV News photograph.)