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Gardening on a Dump

A Middle School Gardening Class in Providence

by Ilana Friedman

The Del Sesto/Springfield middle school was built upon a dump. So was the school garden. The middle school building is designed with special barriers, air quality testers, and conditioning systems to withstand the potential health dangers of the festering garbage below its foundation. The school garden is not.

“Why do we build in raised beds?” the garden teachers ask the students each time we begin a new trimester of after-school garden class.

Ricky and a few other children who have participated in garden class since its inception last spring raise their hands every time.

“Well, the garden is built on top of a garbage dump,” Ricky and others reiterate, “So we have to protect the food from the garbage and chemicals.”

“Yes, it’s true, kids,” we teachers chime in, “There wasn’t much land available in Providence when the city wanted to build this school. They decided to build the school and all of the school grounds on top of an old dump.”

At least the dump is sealed off with a concrete cap, and then topped with a few inches of construction-grade soil, which has a very invasive grass growing on it. This grass crept into our raised beds last summer on a near-weekly basis, but it does the trick by helping to prevent soil erosion on top of the cap. It keeps at bay any potentially dangerous juices or particles that may creep up from below. However, to make matters all the more gruesome, one of the after-school garden teachers, who is also a regular schoolteacher at Del Sesto/Springfield, says she thinks the school grounds have been growing curvier. She hypothesizes that the concrete cap is cracking with weather and the dump is resurrecting itself from the underworld.

The children aren’t privy to the latter idea; there is no need to terrify our students with hypothetical disasters. They help test the soil regularly and they know that it is safe for now. But, when the class finishes discussing the reasons for growing all of our vegetables in raised beds, it is no wonder that some students seem shaken by the impression that their future food grows side by side with a lurking pile of “toxic waste.”

Out of exasperation I often ask myself, Why are children growing food for themselves and their families on this site of all places?

To clarify, all of the food we have grown on this site, over the one season that the garden has existed, was cultivated in nutrient-rich and safe, foot-deep beds of fresh organic soil. The food we grow is not contaminated. If there is any risk, it is from walking in and touching the turf that covers the garden and most of the school grounds—a risk that students face every day by coming to school and playing on the sports field adjacent to the school garden. Perhaps the question should be, “Why build schools for young people on grounds that the Department of Environmental Management deems unsafe?” This is a problem of urban America. People have used and abused so much of the urban landscape that little clean, safe land is left to build schools, and gardens and parks for that matter.

Griping over this reality, however, only goes so far, as the Del Sesto/Springfield garden is proving. Young people can safely garden on a brownfield. And if we want to teach the leaders of tomorrow how to take care of the land we have, we must teach them how to care for and work with contaminated or damaged land.

Taking on the project of gardening on top of a garbage dump requires letting go of the expectation that the school garden will continuously blossom into a pristine, tranquil outdoor classroom. We must take no wondrous blossom for granted. After building all of our raised beds and successfully harvesting a bunch of delicious foods, from tomatoes and purple beans to ground cherries, white eggplant and parsley, DEM noticed our garden beds and acted out of concern for students’ health and other liabilities. Promptly the garden was razed without warning to the garden teachers or the school principal. Supposedly there was a rule that no food was to be grown on that site whatsoever— a message that conflicted with the go-ahead we received a year and a half ago.

The garden teachers protested—our soil tests safe—and DEM resolved that the garden could stay if the beds were not just raised above ground level, but also elevated a couple of feet. We need reconstruction on stilts.

But, again, there’s no point in griping. What could be a better activity for the winter months than to design a garden on stilts? Over the last few weeks, the students in garden class have taken on the mission to survey the site, figure out the sunniest spots, the most flood resistant areas (the concrete cap seems to have caused permanent pools of water in various places), and the space least conducive to vandalism. They have poured water through different textures and components of soil to learn what combination best feeds plants’ root systems. In preparation for a meeting with a landscape architect who has agreed to help with our stilted construction design, the students have even transformed cardboard tubes, foam, toothpicks, bottle tops, and boxes into symbolic elevated garden beds and compost bins, clean soil, irrigation pipelines, and birdhouses. All of this, combined with our slippery ventures around the “vernal pools” of our site-of-poor drainage, leaves us with no dull moment.

Thanks to the brownfield below our feet, the Del Sesto/Springfield garden program creates opportunities for young people to take into consideration the impact of urban development and sprawl on land that could otherwise host a variety of soil-enriching microorganisms, earthworms, and ground covers. Principles of ecological planning, design, and land management permeate their consciousness the way that healthy, rich compost will hopefully always permeate the roots of vegetables they grow. They begin to develop a stronger sensitivity to the often irreversible footprint of our commodity culture and how our environment influences their health.

While learning about land use has become an important aspect of the garden program, the original purpose of the garden was to grow food. And returning to this purpose is what makes the place-based learning that occurs in garden class so powerful. When the students eat vegetables that they grow, they thoroughly enjoy the nuanced flavors and textures that they helped into existence. When they learn that city soil is often saturated with heavy metals, petroleum-based chemicals, and other unsavory products of urban activity, finding out how to protect the plants they grow from that dangerous stuff opens up the students to new questions. Given the importance of environmental conditions, shouldn’t we know where the food in the store comes from? Why not grow your own food or buy from local farmers’ markets? The students are attuned to the value of greater transparency in growing conditions and practices. The students learn all of this through the experiences of eating really good food and feeling really good as a result. The experiences are tangible. But only a small fraction of students at Del Sesto/Springfield have the opportunity to participate in this powerful learning process.

There is no room for garden class in the regular school-day curriculum. Even though food and the sources of food is central to our existence, knowing the science and math, the laws and literature behind food production ranks as inferior subject matter next to the bubble tests and detention halls that much school time is dedicated to. Garden class is merely an after-school program and only a few self-selecting students join. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly), none of the students I have met who are not in garden club know that their school grounds tops a garbage dump or that there are any associated potential health hazards.

If the ground outside the school presents such a health risk that it must not make any contact with the soil in which vegetables are cultivated, it would seem particularly dangerous to have children tracking that same ground into the school on the bottoms of their shoes or touching and possibly ingesting particles of that ground during gym class. If the garden class must go as far as rebuilding the entire space, the school should at least be educating its community about the environmental health risks associated with the school site. But the odds of that happening are slim and for now we can leave it to the garden on stilts to attract curious passersby and perhaps some educational signage to explain the stilts.

When I became a garden teacher last year, one of my primary objectives was to develop my students’ understanding of the significance of where our food comes from and how it is grown. I had imagined that we would ritualistically stir our rich, steaming compost pile while discovering the sustaining cycle of organic life that nourishes us as we nourish it. We would map the places of origin of the ingredients we like on our pizza. We would develop critical perspectives about pesticide use and agro-industry by taste-testing tomatoes grown in our own, organic garden (bursting with deep flavor and juice) and tomatoes gown “conventionally” (pale, bland, grainy). We will someday reach these high expectations, but the process in getting there is what counts.

Who would have imagined? A garbage dump providing excellent growing conditions. Not just for growing healthy food crops, but for cultivating understanding about the intricate links between the health of the environment and of ourselves.

Ilana Friedman leads garden education programs for young people in Providence, Rhode Island, and grows food and flowers in her garden, the Futuristic Farm. She also illustrated this piece. She can be reached at eatmaplesyrup@yahoo.com.

Table of Contents | The Good Life Center | Contact The Best We're Doing

The Best We're Doing : A Journal of The Good Life Center
Vol. 1 No.1 October 2005
Table of Contents GLC Home	Gardening on a Dump A Middle School Gardening Class in Providence by Ilana Friedman The Del Sesto/Springfield middle school was built upon a dump. So was the school garden. The middle school building is designed with special barriers, air quality testers, and conditioning systems to withstand the potential health dangers of the festering garbage below its foundation. The school garden is not. “Why do we build in raised beds?” the garden teachers ask the students each time we begin a new trimester of after-school garden class. Ricky and a few other children who have participated in garden class since its inception last spring raise their hands every time. “Well, the garden is built on top of a garbage dump,” Ricky and others reiterate, “So we have to protect the food from the garbage and chemicals.” “Yes, it’s true, kids,” we teachers chime in, “There wasn’t much land available in Providence when the city wanted to build this school. They decided to build the school and all of the school grounds on top of an old dump.” At least the dump is sealed off with a concrete cap, and then topped with a few inches of construction-grade soil, which has a very invasive grass growing on it. This grass crept into our raised beds last summer on a near-weekly basis, but it does the trick by helping to prevent soil erosion on top of the cap. It keeps at bay any potentially dangerous juices or particles that may creep up from below. However, to make matters all the more gruesome, one of the after-school garden teachers, who is also a regular schoolteacher at Del Sesto/Springfield, says she thinks the school grounds have been growing curvier. She hypothesizes that the concrete cap is cracking with weather and the dump is resurrecting itself from the underworld. The children aren’t privy to the latter idea; there is no need to terrify our students with hypothetical disasters. They help test the soil regularly and they know that it is safe for now. But, when the class finishes discussing the reasons for growing all of our vegetables in raised beds, it is no wonder that some students seem shaken by the impression that their future food grows side by side with a lurking pile of “toxic waste.” Out of exasperation I often ask myself, Why are children growing food for themselves and their families on this site of all places? To clarify, all of the food we have grown on this site, over the one season that the garden has existed, was cultivated in nutrient-rich and safe, foot-deep beds of fresh organic soil. The food we grow is not contaminated. If there is any risk, it is from walking in and touching the turf that covers the garden and most of the school grounds—a risk that students face every day by coming to school and playing on the sports field adjacent to the school garden. Perhaps the question should be, “Why build schools for young people on grounds that the Department of Environmental Management deems unsafe?” This is a problem of urban America. People have used and abused so much of the urban landscape that little clean, safe land is left to build schools, and gardens and parks for that matter. Griping over this reality, however, only goes so far, as the Del Sesto/Springfield garden is proving. Young people can safely garden on a brownfield. And if we want to teach the leaders of tomorrow how to take care of the land we have, we must teach them how to care for and work with contaminated or damaged land. Taking on the project of gardening on top of a garbage dump requires letting go of the expectation that the school garden will continuously blossom into a pristine, tranquil outdoor classroom. We must take no wondrous blossom for granted. After building all of our raised beds and successfully harvesting a bunch of delicious foods, from tomatoes and purple beans to ground cherries, white eggplant and parsley, DEM noticed our garden beds and acted out of concern for students’ health and other liabilities. Promptly the garden was razed without warning to the garden teachers or the school principal. Supposedly there was a rule that no food was to be grown on that site whatsoever— a message that conflicted with the go-ahead we received a year and a half ago. The garden teachers protested—our soil tests safe—and DEM resolved that the garden could stay if the beds were not just raised above ground level, but also elevated a couple of feet. We need reconstruction on stilts. But, again, there’s no point in griping. What could be a better activity for the winter months than to design a garden on stilts? Over the last few weeks, the students in garden class have taken on the mission to survey the site, figure out the sunniest spots, the most flood resistant areas (the concrete cap seems to have caused permanent pools of water in various places), and the space least conducive to vandalism. They have poured water through different textures and components of soil to learn what combination best feeds plants’ root systems. In preparation for a meeting with a landscape architect who has agreed to help with our stilted construction design, the students have even transformed cardboard tubes, foam, toothpicks, bottle tops, and boxes into symbolic elevated garden beds and compost bins, clean soil, irrigation pipelines, and birdhouses. All of this, combined with our slippery ventures around the “vernal pools” of our site-of-poor drainage, leaves us with no dull moment. Thanks to the brownfield below our feet, the Del Sesto/Springfield garden program creates opportunities for young people to take into consideration the impact of urban development and sprawl on land that could otherwise host a variety of soil-enriching microorganisms, earthworms, and ground covers. Principles of ecological planning, design, and land management permeate their consciousness the way that healthy, rich compost will hopefully always permeate the roots of vegetables they grow. They begin to develop a stronger sensitivity to the often irreversible footprint of our commodity culture and how our environment influences their health. While learning about land use has become an important aspect of the garden program, the original purpose of the garden was to grow food. And returning to this purpose is what makes the place-based learning that occurs in garden class so powerful. When the students eat vegetables that they grow, they thoroughly enjoy the nuanced flavors and textures that they helped into existence. When they learn that city soil is often saturated with heavy metals, petroleum-based chemicals, and other unsavory products of urban activity, finding out how to protect the plants they grow from that dangerous stuff opens up the students to new questions. Given the importance of environmental conditions, shouldn’t we know where the food in the store comes from? Why not grow your own food or buy from local farmers’ markets? The students are attuned to the value of greater transparency in growing conditions and practices. The students learn all of this through the experiences of eating really good food and feeling really good as a result. The experiences are tangible. But only a small fraction of students at Del Sesto/Springfield have the opportunity to participate in this powerful learning process. There is no room for garden class in the regular school-day curriculum. Even though food and the sources of food is central to our existence, knowing the science and math, the laws and literature behind food production ranks as inferior subject matter next to the bubble tests and detention halls that much school time is dedicated to. Garden class is merely an after-school program and only a few self-selecting students join. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly), none of the students I have met who are not in garden club know that their school grounds tops a garbage dump or that there are any associated potential health hazards. If the ground outside the school presents such a health risk that it must not make any contact with the soil in which vegetables are cultivated, it would seem particularly dangerous to have children tracking that same ground into the school on the bottoms of their shoes or touching and possibly ingesting particles of that ground during gym class. If the garden class must go as far as rebuilding the entire space, the school should at least be educating its community about the environmental health risks associated with the school site. But the odds of that happening are slim and for now we can leave it to the garden on stilts to attract curious passersby and perhaps some educational signage to explain the stilts. When I became a garden teacher last year, one of my primary objectives was to develop my students’ understanding of the significance of where our food comes from and how it is grown. I had imagined that we would ritualistically stir our rich, steaming compost pile while discovering the sustaining cycle of organic life that nourishes us as we nourish it. We would map the places of origin of the ingredients we like on our pizza. We would develop critical perspectives about pesticide use and agro-industry by taste-testing tomatoes grown in our own, organic garden (bursting with deep flavor and juice) and tomatoes gown “conventionally” (pale, bland, grainy). We will someday reach these high expectations, but the process in getting there is what counts. Who would have imagined? A garbage dump providing excellent growing conditions. Not just for growing healthy food crops, but for cultivating understanding about the intricate links between the health of the environment and of ourselves. Ilana Friedman leads garden education programs for young people in Providence, Rhode Island, and grows food and flowers in her garden, the Futuristic Farm. She also illustrated this piece. She can be reached at eatmaplesyrup@yahoo.com. Table of Contents \| The Good Life Center \| Contact The Best We're Doing All material copyright The Good Life Center.