Garden Club, aka, Junior Master Gardeners is an after school enrichment program for grades 3-5, once a month. I am a master gardener with Hanover County and volunteer my time to keep my status as active. Most of those volunteer hours are here at FA. I use the national Junior Master Gardener curriculum to get ideas and activities. JMG is considered a 4-H program, so I have us registered as a school, keep the stats on who attends, and give out certificates of participation at the end of the year. We maintain a small organic garden on the field in front of the school during the spring and fall. Now that the naturescape is in front of the garden, we plan on having more activities throughout the year, during the school day, but ideally the initial designing, planting, and maintaining will be done by the JMGs. Depening on what and when, some of our harvests, go to the Food Bank and some go home with the students. Sometimes we do mini-projects around the campus. A couple of years ago, we planted tulips, which you should see in mid April. We also talk about nature, nutrition, organic gardening, healthier eating options, basic plant growth, soil, water, and pest management.
The garden has evolved over the years and other parts of the community have gardens as well. We all collarborate with each other to observe, volunteer and learn from each other. The other parts of the FAmily are encouraged to observe during the different phases from germination to harvest. but I may try to encorporate some of the projects to broaden my gardeners’ experiences.
If your student is interested in becoming a Junior Master Gardener, please send
me an email stating just that and who is allowed to pick up.
Unless it is storming, please plan on your gardener going outside and getting dirty. Cold weather meetings will be (mostly) inside. They will need an afternoon snack, a pair of gardening gloves, closed toed shoes, and a water bottle.
Our first meeting will be Wednesday, September 23rd in the LS Library at 3:15pm. Pick up is at 4:30pm. Students not picked up at 4:30 will be sent to Falcon Club.
Last week, we had our second Junior Master Gardening Club meeting. After a little downtime and snack, we headed outside to pull weeds and do some general cleaning. The beds looked better than anticipated, so we left a lot of the plants alone, since a frost has not taken them out. Tomatoes were still ripening and bees were still around the basil which is still flowering. We pulled up the sunflowers and left the heads with seeds for any explorers to the Playscape. The gardeners harvested the basil and mint to take home. 
