Growing Together

Roots & Shoots program flourishes at Mid-Prairie HSEC

By Cheryl Allen
Posted 5/10/23

Consider, for a moment, DNA.   Every cell in your body contains this blueprint for your body as a whole.   Inside every tiny part, we can see an image of the entire organism.

So it is …

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Growing Together

Roots & Shoots program flourishes at Mid-Prairie HSEC

Posted

Consider, for a moment, DNA.  Every cell in your body contains this blueprint for your body as a whole.   Inside every tiny part, we can see an image of the entire organism.

So it is with Roots & Shoots, a program within the Mid-Prairie Homeschool Assistance Program. By looking at this one part, you can see the objectives of the whole.

What are those objectives? To support and empower families.  To treat every moment as a learning opportunity.  To foster better, stronger people and a better, stronger community.

To grow together.

This year more than 500 home-schooled students are enrolled in one of the biggest attendance centers in the area.  They learn at home most mornings, and then spend an afternoon or two a week at the former Washington Township Elementary School building in rural Kalona.  Here they attend art, music, and science classes, among others, and socialize with other students.  The school building is a family space; parents and young siblings spend time onsite as well.

One activity students of any grade level can involve themselves in is Roots & Shoots, a plant-based program developed by teacher Laura Mallory.  Its range is broad, covering everything from the school’s outdoor landscaping to the indoor ioponics tank, but its heart is a 10 x 20 donated greenhouse.

“I had done a Wednesday afternoon club with a group of students about growing things in the spring, and it turned into this beautiful thing.  Then I had a family come forth and say, ‘Well, we have a greenhouse that is no longer being utilized.  Would you like to have it?’” Mallory explains.  “So I took this club that had a handful of students in it, and now, four years later, I would say we have, in an average year, around 75 to 100 people who help me, whether it’s with the spring fundraiser, which is our flowers, or our fall mum fundraiser.”

Homeschool students and families have ownership over every aspect of the program, from the logo, which was designed by a student, to plant selection.  

In the past, Mallory’s group raised individual plants in 4” containers and sold them at the spring sale; however, for this year’s Flower Fundraiser on May 12-13, families wanted to try multiple plants in hanging baskets and patio pots.  

Inside the greenhouse, the container plants are almost ready to be sold.  Strawberry plants are bearing fruit; petunias have been pinched back to create fuller plants; and herb pots are ready to harvest. 

“I’m excited to see where that’s going to go this year,” Mallory says.

The entire process, from the arrival of plugs in February to selling the plants this weekend, is a learning opportunity for those who choose to participate.  How to plant, water, and round the plants out are all skills to be learned; the difference between annuals and perennials, and how to create a balanced and pleasing planter, are as well. 

At the sale, students take on all the customer service, from inquiring whether a customer needs plants for sun or shade, to taking money and making change, and loading purchased plants into vehicles.

“We school every minute of the day, five days a week, 365 days a year,” Mallory says.  “Schooling is happening all the time.”

She points out that some of the skills students learn pertain to character.  In a society that’s often focused on instant gratification, leaning to see the longer growing process through helps develop maturity.  Giving away plants in exchange for freewill donations rather than set prices helps students develop empathy for those with less-full pockets.

“It all revolves around us growing and becoming a better person and a stronger person and using those skills to help others and build community,” Mallory says.

One of the goals of the spring flower fundraiser, and later this year, the fall mum fundraiser, is to expand the program.  Last year the sales raised enough funds so that, in addition to buying plugs, containers, and mulch, the school could purchase an irrigation system for the mums they grow and a rain barrel to collect water for watering. 

This year, Mallory would like to purchase another small greenhouse, and if possible, improve the playground area adjacent to the greenhouse, starting with a picnic shelter for shade and a garbage receptacle.

Ultimately, however, the goal of Roots & Shoots is to support families.

“I’m blessed that we can use this to help support the families, because we really wouldn’t be here without our families,” Mallory says.  “We support them.  They are the primary educator.  They do the teaching, and they do everything at their home school, so really our role is support.  So it’s really fantastic that I have people who support this program.”

Through Roots & Shoots, Mallory has also been able to mentor two students who went on to pursue careers in landscaping/plant horticulture.  “Both of them went to the Kirkwood program,” she says.

And just as the plant program she developed has helped to enrich the lives of others, she finds it has enriched her own life as well.

“I think when I did that club for the first time back in April four years ago, it was more or less, Yeah, its spring, this is kind of what you do in spring,” she says.  “Now it has become a stronger passion, to be able to grow things and play in the dirt.  It’s kind of my happy place.”

She also finds working out in the peaceful greenhouse helps build relationships.  

“You have some really in-depth conversations that you don’t think you will ever have,” she notes.

And so it is with all life: the more we grow upward, the deeper we grow our roots.  Sometimes, we even grow together.

The Flower Fundraiser takes place Friday, May 12 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday, May 13, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the HSEC, 1592 Angle Rd SW, Kalona.