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Upward Bound kids improve middle school garden

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POLSON — New compost bins, a fruit and vegetable washing station, a reinforced fence and a refurbished greenhouse are a few of the improvements Upward Bound students have made at the Polson Middle School garden.

Upward Bound is a federal program that provides opportunity for high school students to succeed in school. Their goal is to increase high school graduation rates and numbers of kids who enroll in and graduate from postsecondary education.

There is a community service component for UB, and that’s where the PMS garden came in.

Earlier this year burglars at the garden “trashed the greenhouse and smashed and trashed some of the plants,” said Amy Williamson, special education teacher at PMS. 

Williamson’s coworker Patti Mills, who teaches 5th grade and works at Upward Bound, and her husband Luke, the night shift coordinator for Upward Bound, thought of Williamson’s project when it came time to do community service work with their group of students.

For four days, UB students at the PMS garden site were measuring and cutting boards, clearing brush, doing construction and repair and planting flowers, seeds and bulbs. 

Madison Scott, a junior from Arlee, said she built a couple of cabinets. 

Usually she works in the gardens, but at PMS she worked with wood, following instructions.

“It was fun,” Scott said.

Wearing safety glasses, student Jenna Mullaney said she was best at running the saw.

She cut many boards after the other kids measured.

To help pay for the repairs and improvements, Daylen Dupuis of Dupuis Lumber Company donated the lumber for shoring up the fence, fixing the storage shed and other projects. Treasure State Gravel supplied soil and gravel. Walmart gave the group some seeds and bulbs, and a greenhouse gifted a few tomato plants. The group also received a Rolfson grant and a Montana State University Extension grant.   

Dupuis said it sounded like a good program, and the business often donates for kids programs.

Not all the building materials were new since Williamson said she tries to teach repurposing as much as possible. The students took apart big pallets donated by Western Bee Supplies and used them to make the compost bins.  

The PMS garden is a relatively new project since Williamson has been at PMS for only two years. Her students started all the plants from seed in the classroom last spring. They grow a little bit of everything, Williamson said, from salsa gardens to a “three sisters garden,” featuring corn, beans and squash as in the southwestern Native American and Mohegan cultures. Potatoes, cabbages, broccoli and pumpkins also have a home in the garden.

“My kids are some of the most behaviorally challenged in the school,” Williamson said, “but get them out to play with the hoses and dig in the dirt, and it’s amazing what positive changes I can see.”

In her classroom, they also raise worms. That’s a hit, too. 

Williamson’s class works within the school community, too, using scraps from the food service for compost, and growing perennials for dyes and to be sketched. 

For the 2014-15 school year, they will have a FoodCorps worker in their garden, teaching about sustainability, how to grow things on their own, composting, soil, etc. 

During breaks in the workday, the UB students made some homemade salsa from the gardens. Due to their hard work helping repair and rebuild, Williamson’s kids will be able to sell salsa kits at the Polson Farmers Market and make some extra funds. 

Three other groups of UB students are currently working on projects. Two groups are working on trail maintenance — one group in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and one in the Badger and Two Medicine country — while a third group is helping restore native plants in Glacier National Park. 

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