The Vegetable Project’s eighth annual Evening in the Garden is taking shape now. We have the date: Tuesday, May 6 (unless it rains and is rolled over to Wednesday, May 7). We have the location: New Scotland Elementary School, where a thousand tulip bulbs that we planted in October with the school’s 500 students should be blooming in the spring. We are talking with food establishments. We are lining up the music. We are reaching out to garden-related organizations about being a part of things.
And we would like you to know that becoming a member of the event’s honorary committee is a great way to invest in hands-on learning in Albany schools and a great way to stand up and be counted as a friend of our efforts to build teaching and learning around doing and touching and tasting and experiencing. We will include your name in an event program when you make a $25 contribution. And you can do that right now by visiting Eventbrite and clicking on the tickets button.
Bringing the event to New Scotland Elementary is a bit of a departure for us. The Vegetable Project does not lead a garden program at the school. We have, however, gotten to know many folks at the school with maple tree tapping and bulb planting during the pandemic and then by building milk jug miniature greenhouses with first graders there three years in a row. But most of all, we are admirers of a gardening and Garden Club initiative that parent Sandra Penny launched a couple of years ago. And we would love to draw attention to this wonderful work.
The volunteer led Vegetable Project has been digging in the dirt with Albany kids since 2009 and making the case since just about then that getting kids outside and getting their hands dirty is so good for children’s development that schools ought to embrace it as a tool that supports academic achievement. You can help keep our programming and our voice strong as a member of this annual event’s honorary committee.
–Bill Stoneman
