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Vivid red, pink and orange zinnias greet visitors at the gate of White Pine Middle School. Honeybees buzz, butterflies flutter around the flowers and sunflowers stretch towards the sky.
The middle schoolers are responsible for the expansive garden. Depending on the time of year, they grow garlic, radishes, corn, tomatoes, peaches, apples, mint, mushrooms, blueberries and more. They even have a chicken coop housing three hens that lay fresh eggs.
Produce from the garden is sold at weekly Thursday markets in the parking lot of Montessori Children’s House of Lansing. People from nearby neighborhoods come to buy the goods, said Jen Pearson, the lead guide of the school’s program.
“We started from zero dollars in their budget and began selling mint tea," said Pearson. “It just kept snowballing from there.”
Production exchanges are common among Montessori schools and are a way that students can help serve their community and also earn money, she said.
The students use the money they earn from the market to add additions to their garden, Pearson said.
“Everything with the chicken coop, they had that as their focus at their markets during the spring last year,” Pearson said.
In addition to selling fresh produce, the students make handmade goods like laminated watercolor bookmarks and baked goods to sell and make money, she said.
Their garden was recently recognized as a Certified Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. This means their garden provides food, water, shelter and places to raise young for wildlife.
It's full of pollinators like hummingbirds, bees, and monarch butterflies, and the students frequently observe a wide variety of bug species, said Pearson.
This type of school garden is the first of its kind in Mid-Michigan. Other Michigan Montessorri schools in Grand Rapids and Detroit have started projects like this one, she said.
A lot of the produce in the garden, like the kiwi, won’t be harvestable until years later. This was an intentional choice on the part of the students, Pearson said.
“Most of it won’t reach maturity until these students are long gone but they wanted to leave their legacy by planting things that future generations can have,” she said.
