“It’s satisfying cleaning up the beds and planting new ones and seeing them grow,” states Kaia Griffon, a third year member of the Gardening Club.

The Gardening Club has been around since fall of 2020. Throughout the club’s history, members have learned how to garden all kinds of vegetables and herbs, how to practice personal sustainability and to truly appreciate where our food comes from. 

So far this year, the club hasn’t been able to do much due to the lack of members, but they were able to prepare the garden beds for fall planting. Mrs. Riley-Edwards, the advisor of the Gardening Club here at Kempsville High School, has had big turnouts of the club in the past. She hopes to get more members to join meetings by starting to hold them after school rather than during the day.

The activities of this club focus more on the school garden beds. They do this by preparing them, planting seedlings, weeding, and post-planting cleanup. The things they’ve planted in the past include radishes, beets, spinach, herbs, cabbage, mint, strawberries, rosemary, kale, swiss chard, and basil in the spring.

“So the idea is that we plant things and we will use them in our labs, and as far as composting goes … we would use a lot of the stuff here and would compost it and put it in the beds,” Mrs. Riley-Edwards comments.

During the end of fall and throughout the winter, the club’s meetings consist of maintaining the beds rather than harvesting or starting anything new. If any weeds sprout up they make sure to get on top of that. The majority of the harvest and planting occurs closer to the end of the school year.

The planning process for the club hardly takes up any meeting time at all. They converse, get a basis of what everyone agrees on doing, and simply follow through with their plans.

Virginia Beach Food Services supplies the club with their seedlings. The seedlings are already prepared and ready to be dropped and extend their roots into the beds.

“We’re in the planning stages of having a fundraiser,” reflects Jasmine Corozza, a senior and member of the Gardening Club. 

Allison Haynes is also a senior here at Kempsville High School and is the president of the Gardening Club. She states that “once we get a few more members, [we’ll] start raising some more money.”

The club’s goal for this school year is to get more members to join. A lot of people have shown interest in the club, but the issue is getting more people to actually show up. 

The Gardening club is already on track for advertising their need for people to join. They’ve got a page up and running on Instragram and one of the members is on digital design, so they’ve created some Canvas to post helpful information. 

A couple years ago, the club planted apple trees in honor of the seniors that year. They had a bunch more members then and were able to raise all the needed money on their own. 

“We’ve talked about maybe doing a class on composting. Things like that to try to help engage interest with the club,” expresses Mrs. Riley-Edwards.

The Gardening Club offers all kinds of learning experiences and gives students a chance to get outside and breathe in some fresh air. This interactive club presents students with general gardening knowledge as well as encouraging them to get their hands dirty and try something new.