Editor,

The Sebago Elementary School gardens have become quite a part of our school in the last few years. Spring should be greeted with thousands of daffodils that we can sell for a fundraiser to support them. We have been getting calls for the seeds already. We have outside classrooms, a revived nature trail, a shed, and wonderful kids who exalt in being outside and being part of this wonderful learning experience.

Now we are at a turning point and need more people to join in helping with the gardens. During the last seven years, I have put a lot of time into the gardens and their creation. I have been blessed with wonderful experiences and learned a lot about gardening, however, now I am working full time. With that, three kids, and our own gardens falling behind I cannot keep going at the same rate. In addition, several of our volunteers no longer have kids in the school any longer or never have. They have expressed dissatisfaction on working on a project that so few of the families seem to care about and they also have started new ventures. So, we need to draw in new people to our group or put the gardens to rest.

There is no need to be a gardener to become a volunteer. Several of our volunteers do not garden and have no real interest in gardening. We need all sorts of things and types of help including: fund raisers, people who may be willing to work a craft fair or two, grant writers, people to water, people to enforce basic safety in the gardens so that the kids can go out and work in them, people who might want to actually learn with the kids about gardening, do a craft or an experiment, letter writers, publicity seekers, seed packagers, people to print things, people who occasionally might have a half hour or more or people who have a day a month, people who while waiting for their kids at the end of the day would go out and dead head (don’t worry your kids can show you how), water, weed.

There are 143 really important reasons to keep the gardens going. As a person who has been out there with them watching the kids who are having a hard time in the classroom come out and excel and revive in the gardens, I can tell you it is worth it. My husband was at an open house one day and went out to the gardens. He never gets to be there when kids are there, instead putting in masses of support time at strange weekend and summer hours. He came in and said; “Now I really get it.”

He said he was mobbed by kids who wanted to show him their tomato plant, their marigolds, etc. He was pulled to admire spiders and told why we should love them. He was given herbs to smell. That is what it is. The kids build pride, support the food banks, and learn. Do you know how much a 10th of a gram of poppy seeds is? Your kids do.

We hope enough people can join us to keep these gardens going. For those who can remember, think back to how the entryway used to look. We invite anyone to come. Meetings are open, but not mandatory.

For more information, please call Vanessa at 787-3755, e-mail wallaceinsebago@roadrunner.com, or stop one of our moles and ask: Corrie Lewis, Heather Grass, Lauren Holston, Anne Batchelder, Karen Wiles, Betsy Maher, or Eileen Russo.

Vanessa Wallace

Sebago