Hunt School Discovery Garden
The Hunt School Discovery Garden is an educational partnership program between the Hunt School 4th and 5th grade classes, the Hunt Garden Club and Hill Country Master Gardeners.
Each fall and spring the Hunt Garden Club designs a 12-week program lasting one hour per week with an indoor lesson
as well as work in the garden. Classes are based on the Junior Master Gardener curriculum. First is a lesson in lasagna gardening, preparing the gardens, and planning tasks for planting day.
Lessons cover:
- types of soils and fertilizers
- water conservation and where the water comes from
- the importance of native plants and wildscapes
- how the drought affects birds, insects, and fish
- mulch and its importance
- photo journalism
2014 has seen the expansion of the program with the addition of the Kinder Garden – Smart Plants project. This first year has provided an environment for 5 & 6-year-olds to experience spring gardening. Students, in groups of 7 to 8 children, received packets of seeds and designated planting beds. The project included informal discussions on the seed’s germination, the local environment, insects, and pollination. The season ended with students having cut flowers to take home.
First things first, a lesson about soils
Next, all about insects
Then, very important, all about water
A specific design has been developed for each of the student’s gardens. Each garden is divided into squares with string. The students plant a certain vegetable or flower in each square .
Then comes the work
Success, and a bountiful harvest!
The fall gardening activities will end with a gardening handicraft and a "question game" day. The Hunt Garden Club will meet in February to plan the classes for next spring and fall.
Garden Club member/Master Gardener Bernadell Larson works in the Discovery Garden, but her special interest is water conservation and environmentally safe construction practices. Larson conceived the idea of adding a small water catchment system to provide water for the garden. The idea caught fire among members of the small community. More than $15,000 in goods and services have been donated, with $3,000 of that as in-kind donations. The result is a system that collects and stores 20,000-gallons of rain water; and, the tank was filled after the October 2009 rains.
