When you walk down the hallways, there is a cut out corner that is hard to ignore. This is the Garfield greenhouse: a relaxed and clean atmosphere for students to experience a new shade of nature and grow their green thumbs. Built in 2007, the greenhouse has been incorporated into Garfield’s culture and has been a frequent inhabitant for the gardening club.

The gardening club is a group that was created in 2016 grows plants from birth to adulthood. Gardening club meets every Wednesday at lunch to make plans for future projects and take care of their outside garden.

“We mostly tend to the garden and water the plants” said Jacob Orser, a senior and co-president of the gardening club. “Sometimes we’ll talk about [projects], like right now we’re planning on making corsages for prom to raise money for the club.” In past years Gardening club had created a new system to grow green beans.

“We made an aquatic system last year and started one this year where they are self sufficient to a point. The fish and plants feed off of each other” Orser said.

The gardening club is always helping out and spreading joy in the Garfield community. They give flowers to teachers and even offer to help those teachers who need emergency help with their plants.

“If they bring them to us we re-pot them, fertilize them, and put them under a grow light. When we send them out it’s often a grown plant that holds up well without water and sun, so the teachers don’t have to do a lot” Orser said.

Dr. Finley, who teaches AP environmental, also advises the Gardening club.

“I love being around all of the plants and the relaxed atmosphere. I wish this could be a part of my day everyday because it’s comforting” Dr. Finley said. “[The greenhouse is a] hidden gem that we don’t take advantage of and a lot of teachers could use this in a bunch of different ways.”

We live in an urban environment where it can be hard to find places to grow food. Through spaces like gardening club and other farming organizations, we can begin to change the way we look at growing and consuming food. Green Plate Special is an example of an urban farm not only just grows their own food and raises chickens, it also teaches elementary and middle school students how to grow and cook their own food in an urban environment.

“[Urban farming is about] connection and community” Dr. Finley said.”I think that gardens and community farming has this great way of bringing a lot of people together around growing food.”