Swiping a sweat-drenched, wayward curl from his forehead, Kevin Haggerty surveyed from his crouched position the row of freshly overturned soil. He grimaced, then pointed to the tomato plants that sat haphazardly in shallow pockets of earth.
"Guys, when you put the compost in, put it underneath as well," Haggerty said. He then demonstrated the proper planting technique to a half dozen North Little Rock High School students on their knees, gingerly digging in the dirt in a line behind him.
Haggerty -- an AmeriCorps volunteer from California's Sierra Nevada Mountains -- has spent the past year guiding a team of Environmental and Spatial Technology Initiative, or EAST, students to create the North Little Rock Community Farm.
The corner of the high school and Lakewood Middle School campus was claimed about 15 months ago by Environmental and Spatial Technology Initiative student DeLena Lattimore, who wanted to create a vibrant and sustainable school farm.
Lattimore -- then a ninth-grader -- worked together with the initiative's administrator Mason Graves and initiative facilitator KJ Kite to develop partnerships with investors such as The People Tree nonprofit group and North Little Rock's Fit 2 Live Initiative to make the farm a reality.
Dozens of the students filter through the farm in six daily class periods in which they have tilled rows of in-ground vegetables; constructed and maintained a year-round greenhouse; and hauled, measured and sawed railroad ties to create a scattering of raised garden beds.
The perimeter of the corner garden is lined with rabbit hutches, duck ponds, henhouses and a broiler-chicken pen.
All aspects of the farm -- from feeding the animals and watering the plants to harvesting and marketing the goods produced -- are student-driven. Teams of volunteers are continuing the work through the summer.
"They gather and sell the eggs," Haggerty said, then pointed to the white broiler chickens grappling for freshly sown feed. "And they'll watch these guys get processed."
Ninth-grader Chance Harger called to Haggerty from the tomato patch. The 15-year-old had taken the lead to complete the daily planting session.
"Straight up and down, not sideways, right?" Harger asked. "That deep in the ground?"
The students take personal ownership of the farm and need no motivation to roll up their sleeves, Haggerty said.
Haggerty rested his chin on the handle of a shovel and nodded to a group of the students ripping apart cardboard boxes, then laying them flat in a square plot lined with railroad ties.
"Why are we covering it up with cardboard?" asked ninth-grader Ashley Young, 15.
Before Haggerty could answer, several other students chimed in to explain the benefits of the biodegradable cardboard in controlling weeds and grass.
"This is their farm. They'll tell me, 'Why don't you put a gate here?' They learn leadership, and they understand the economic part of it as well," Haggerty said.
School gardens are becoming more prevalent in Arkansas and around the nation as studies are showing a link between school gardens and an increase in students' physical activity and even higher test scores.
Tracey Sadoski, the district grant writer with the Mansfield School District, said the "salad-bar" garden at the Mansfield High School had an unexpected benefit beyond teaching students about healthy nutrition and growing their own food.
"We have mentoring days where they bring up the elementary and middle school kids to visit the garden. It's very neat to watch them develop the skills to be able to teach something to someone else," Sadoski said. "I think we're going to have kids pursuing a career in education who would have never thought of it before."
A two-year Cornell University study -- conducted with 12 elementary schools in New York state -- found that children were more physically active at school and significantly less sedentary at home after their schools implemented gardens.
"The findings are striking, given that the amount of time spent in the gardens was relatively modest -- typically just one, two hours per week," said Nancy Wells, an environmental psychologist, and professor of design and environmental analysis in Cornell's College of Human Ecology.
"Our hope is that these findings will contribute to a research evidence base regarding the benefits of gardening and guide decision-makers in the allocation of resources aimed at promoting children's health."
The Cornell University study is linked to an ongoing, larger research project, "Healthy Gardens, Healthy Youth," being conducted in collaboration with the University of Arkansas, Washington State University and Iowa State University.
Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, 48 schools in Arkansas, Iowa, New York and Washington were selected in the two-year study to receive "garden intervention."
The research results, which Wells said will be released "in the coming months," will show how school gardens affect nutritional knowledge, fruit and vegetable consumption, physical activity, and related outcomes among elementary school children.
School gardens may also have an effect on student test scores, according to preliminary results from the Delta Garden Study conducted by the Childhood Obesity Prevention Research Program of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute.
The five-year, $2 million, USDA Agriculture Research Service study -- which began in 2009 and concludes this year -- funded 10 school gardens across the state to study the connection between school gardens to increased fruit and vegetable intake and higher levels of physical activity, as well as the reduction of body mass index, body fat and social risk behaviors.
The study also tracks secondary variables such as the increase in school bonding, improved student grade-point averages and higher Benchmark testing scores.
Preliminary results show that a controlled group of seventh-graders who worked in their schools' gardens scored significantly higher on Benchmark tests between fifth and seventh grade than their counterparts in schools without gardens, said Judith L. Weber, director of the Childhood Obesity Prevention Research Program at the Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute and an associate professor of pediatrics in the Colleges of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
"There are thousands and thousands of measures to look at," Weber said, adding that the official results will not be released for several months. "One of my favorite things in the study was seeing how well kids in special education did in the gardens. They can operate in the garden no differently than kids in mainstream classes."
The school gardens also offer an alternative for less active students who are struggling with obesity to participate in nontraditional sports activity and provide a bonding opportunity, Weber said.
"When you work with kids who are already overweight, very often these kids are intimidated by team sports like football, basketball or track. They're not going to sign up for that stuff," Weber said. "Gardens promote lifestyle activities. You're digging, raking, watering and participating in load-bearing activities. It's very nonthreatening. Most of the time kids don't even recognize they're doing physical activity."
Haggerty, the AmeriCorps volunteer at the North Little Rock Community Farm, said the benefits of school gardens are endless and the impact will last a lifetime. Physical activity and social impact aside, Haggerty added, the experience opens up career opportunities that students may have never before considered and raises leadership qualities to the surface that may never have been recognized.
He pointed to students tossing rocks and weeds out of a planting bed, then Haggerty watched as the students collaborated to get the job done. Ninth-grader Chase Croy, 15, waved a hand to take in the whole farm.
"When we started, there was nothing built; nothing at all out here. Now look at it," Croy said. "We have a lot of say in what goes on out here. It's great."
Metro on 06/29/2014