Going Green with Gardening

(From left to right): Iggy Senchak, Max Stoltz, Mariah Kidd, Kathryn Clayson, Laura Schoeck.

While undergoing our gardening project, we all learned a lot. This included compromise, persistence, event coordination, and working as a team. While asking someone to work as a team may sound like an easy task, difficulties can arise when people have different personalities, viewpoints, methods of communication, and ideas. Our now single group was originally two groups who wanted to start a community garden but in different areas. While one group wanted to appeal to elementary school students, the other wanted to appeal to the elderly. This was when we learned how to compromise. After debating on the desired audience, we decided to build a garden at a high school for troubled students.

From this point on, everyone had their roles for the group, which made everything run smoother because everyone knew what their responsibilities were. Our group, like most groups, functioned better because everyone was assigned a role. This was prevalent when we lost two of our members and roles had to be readdressed. Until roles were reassigned, few members knew exactly what their jobs were and the workload increased per person; but our members persisted even when we lost two of our teammates. Our leader lost a co-coordinator and as a whole we lost two sets of working hands, leaving more responsibility for everyone else. However, all our members pushed through and continued to work towards our goal.

Our goal was to teach our community about gardening and how it contributes to a sustainable lifestyle. The name of our project was Planting Seeds because we wanted to share our ideas of sustainability so they would flourish like a fruitful garden into innovations within our community’s youth. The students would learn how to garden through cultivating the one at their school and share their knowledge with those around them. The garden would also increase the availability for more locally grown foods, making the demand for imports decrease. However, on the day of our project, the school canceled the event due to miscommunications with the school board. We were left with hundreds of vegetable plants and nowhere to put them, but we persisted. Everyone rallied together to search for a new option and and our coordinator was able to book us a place at the Wetland Center. There we saw a wide range of families, all who learned about plant life and sustainability. On the day of our event we did not leave with a single plant. All the mishaps and bumps in the road led to an opportunity for growth and now instead of one garden at a single school, there will be new gardens across multiple homes in Raleigh. While our project was not what we originally pictured, it was still a success that taught us all to persist, work as a team, and to be resourceful even when it may seem difficult.