Furnace Woods Elementary Makes Gardening a Must

Second grade teachers and resource room teachers of Furnace Woods Elementary in Cortlandt Manor, have teamed up with Susan Traeger, Furnace Woods mom, to create a gardening program outside of their building.

The gardening program, called “Grow and Go Green,” is an effort by the school to reduce its carbon footprint. Lorraine Giametta, a Resource Room teacher, said the garden gives the students a chance to “try something new.”

The project was started in 2009, and is in its second year after skipping 2010 due to budget and time constraints. A grant of $1,000 from the Hendrick Hudson Community Education Foundation allowed the program to triple in size. They bought new gardening tools, seeds, and each 2nd grade classroom received a copy of “Diary of a Worm,” by Doreen Cronin.

The gardens are all organic, and are fertilized with compost made from children’s daily lunches. The students learn how to identify what can be composted, and what cannot. So far the garden boasts adolescent heads of lettuce and arugula, radishes, pole beans and potatoes, among other herbs and vegetables.

“Some kids are great weed pickers, we have great waterers,” said Giametta, adding that “We’ve seen a lot of strengths that we wouldn’t have seen in the classroom.”

At the end of each growing season the students harvest the vegetables and have a salad party. “I like watching them grow,” says 8-year-old Alex Lee. Ellen Martivano, 10, added that “When you grow plants you can eat them at the end of the year.”

Giametta finally noted that the goal of the program was to encourage in the students “a lifelong consciousness about conservation and sustainability.”

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