About a year ago, a few enthusiastic students of St. Mary's High School, Gandhipuram with the guidance of their Headmaster and teachers engaged themselves in promoting eco-friendly terrace garden in their school. The students decided to grow their own veggies for their school's in-house kitchen.
As a team they worked as gardeners during their lunch break and after school hours. Right from the day one, it was indeed a different experience altogether for the children to hold hand shovel, rake and sprinklers to create their dream garden.
Just before the school bell rings, the students visited their terrace garden for sowing seeds, choosing the manure, weeding and sprinkling water. It was a dream come true for the team to see tiny leaves sprouting up in all of the pots.
And now, students are busy harvesting vegetables and greens from their little garden and use them for their mid-day meals provided by the school. Out of the 900 students who study in this school, close to 200 kids consume mid-day meals. And, veggies for sambhar comes right away from the terrace and not from markets.
Speaking to SimpliCity, Headmaster, Peter M says “The roof-top garden in our school is 100% organic. Even the manure that is used in the garden is organic. We are encouraging the farm to table concept. Seven students from class seven are chosen to manage this garden under the supervision of Vivekananda, our teacher who is in turn trained by environmental activist Pandiarajan. During the lunch break and after school hours, the students engage themselves in maintaining the terrace garden. This roof-top garden was set up with a minimum investment of 12,000/- and currently vegetables like beetroot, carrot, beans, brinjal and ladies finger and varied greens are harvested'.
One of the students of this gardening team shares “I am happy that his school has given us an opportunity to explore gardening. Even before this garden was set up, we were educated on the various aspects of agriculture and gardening. We as a team enjoy seeing the plants yield a variety of vegetables and the life cycle of every plant. And the thrilling part is our veggies are used for our own consumption. And we know which is a creeper, root vegetables, nutrients required for the plant to survive, importance of sunlight....'
At a time when young kids are choosing to have a career in information technology, engineering, medicine among others, it is heart-warming to learn that several of them are showing great interest in agriculture, farming and roof-top gardening. Motivated by the results that the roof-top garden has produced in their school, students have shown interest in starting a garden in their homes. Parents have also given an awesome feedback to the headmaster and the teachers for their terrace gardening project.
