Students at Mabelvale Magnet Middle School learned their first lesson Wednesday as they dug into the site for the school’s new garden: It’s tough to push a shovel through Bermuda grass.
The class of 2014 laughed as it stomped shovels through the school’s courtyard, tearing dozens of divots into the turf. Next school year, that sunny acre of grass will be the first pilot site for one of the largest studies to examine whether gardening at school can help adolescents get healthier and get along better.
Organizers believe this is the first and longest study of gardening’s effect on middle-school students.
“We want it to be beautiful,” said Chris Hiryak, the school’s new full-time garden manager. “I want the kids to be inspired. And that’s what it takes. They need to see something and be blown away.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded more than $2 million for the Delta Garden Study, which eventually will be expanded to schools in the Mississippi Delta of eastern Arkansas. Mabelvale will serve as the pilot school for the 2010-2011 school year; nine more schools will be added later.
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Ten schools without gardens will serve as control schools, so researchers can compare results. Scientists believe working in the garden will encourage kids to be more physically active and eat more fruits and vegetables. They also hope the project will reduce fighting and other behavioral problems at school.
Researchers chose Mabelvale as their pilot site because it’s demographically similar to Mississippi Delta schools. The pilot school needed to have at least 30 percent of its students on free or reduced-cost lunches — a measure of poverty— and have at least 40 percent of students be minorities. Thirty percent of the student population needed to be overweight or obese.
To qualify, the school also had to have enough teachers and students willing to participate, and the school had to agree to let students work in the garden for 40 minutes twice a week.
The team handling the study includes childhood obesity experts, statisticians, pediatric psychologists and an urban gardening expert, among others. The Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute and the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Delta Obesity Prevention Research Unit are leading the study.
Among those at Wednesday’s groundbreaking was Arkansas first lady Ginger Beebe, who said many kids only think of canned or frozen products when it comes to fruits and vegetables.
“We must change what children know about how to raise a garden,” she said.
Mablevale’s budding gardeners will grow squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and other fruits and veggies as well as herbs. Organizers also hope to put a chicken coop and composting sites on campus.
“This is the kind of research that will push public policy, that will hopefully effect real change in our communities,” Hiryak said.
Scientists expect to track 200 students in the 6th, 7th and 8th grades at each school for a total of 4,000 children. They’ll be picked from health, science and physical education courses and researchers will track data, including students’ body mass index rates, to see what effect gardening has on the adolescents.
The study will track each group of students for one academic year.
Many students at the groundbreaking said the project would be popular among classmates.
“Anything to get out of class,” eighth-grader Victor Ryland said with a laugh.