Home school club hosts fall flower fundraiser

By Molly Roberts
Posted 9/23/20

Over the summer, when Mid-Prairie Home School Assistance Program teacher Laura Mallory came in for lunch, she usually had to wash a stubborn layer of dirt off her hands. She is the advisor of the …

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Home school club hosts fall flower fundraiser

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Over the summer, when Mid-Prairie Home School Assistance Program teacher Laura Mallory came in for lunch, she usually had to wash a stubborn layer of dirt off her hands. She is the advisor of the Roots and Shoots gardening club at the Home School Education center, helping the students there to grow over 700 chrysanthemums that are now available for purchase.

Mallory’s family owned a greenhouse, but since moving to the area, it sat in storage. That’s why they decided to donate the greenhouse to the Home School Education Center. It took about a year and a half to get the logistics, such as electricity, grants, and donations, figured out, but last fall the greenhouse was finally up and operational for the students. They’ve done nothing but grow since.

Despite the pandemic, the Roots and Shoots club ran an extremely successful spring flower fundraiser, delivering flowers around the area before Mother’s Day in May.

This time around, mums are available for pickup at the Home School Education Center on Angle Road in Kalona. They are $10 for a standard pot and $15 for a combination pot with mums and tall grass.

Mallory hopes the fundraiser will bring in about $5,000 that can be fed directly back into the gardening club, as well as used for other small expenses like birdseed and painting supplies for a student who wants to paint a mural on the back of the greenhouse.

The club offers much more than fundraising, however. Mallory said the students learn hard work, sweating out in the sun, hauling soil and flower pots and mulch around.

“The kids are out here, they’re learning about how things grow,” said Rachel Kerns, the director of the Home School Assistance Program. “We talk about patience, we talk about delayed gratification over time, knowing that our jobs aren’t done just because we think they’re finished, that sometimes we have to wait a little bit to see the fruits of our labor.”

The club has also taken responsibility for improving and maintaining the landscaping at the Home School Education Center, even uprooting, transplanting and splitting plants.

The Roots and Shoots club is a laid-back program available to the home school students of all ages and their parents. Currently about 40-50 kids are involved.

“Our preschoolers love playing in the dirt, they’re really good at filling the pots with soil and they love to water because they love to get wet and even spray each other with the hose,” Mallory said. “Then, even the high schoolers love the planting part of things because they have the ability to be precise, making sure it gets in the middle of the pot and not planting it too deep.”

Six-year-old Bethany Wenger said her favorite part of gardening is loading the potted plants onto the wagon to deliver them to customer’s cars because she can pretend to be a horse.

A lot of work goes into growing 700 mums from starter plants, but everyone, students, teachers, and parents all seem to agree that it’s worth it.

“I love that the kids are able to come and see the fruits of their labor in such a beautiful way,” Mallory said, gesturing to the rows and rows of potted plants. “They see them grow, see that they’ve gotten so big, and then it’s just really cool to see them go out the door, knowing they’ll be on front porches all around our community.”