McGregor Continues Tradition of Garden Education

Susan Gerrits has a green thumb and knows how to use it.

As a parent and member of the PTA at  in downtown Rochester, Gerrits has spearheaded a growing movement – literally.

Thanks to her hard work and dedication, the grounds at McGregor Elementary have been transformed into beds of flowers, bushes and ornamental plants. Surrounding the school are gardens planted with the help of McGregor students, parents and supporters. Gerrits and the McGregor PTA have even established an outdoor classroom, which will be put in use for the first time this spring, and someday, they hope to create a vegetable garden.

The program at McGregor began nearly two years ago as a way to improve the appearance of the school’s grounds, but it became a part of the PTA’s initiatives to go green and encourage students to learn practical lessons about science and the ecosystem.

But as the saying goes, everything old is new again.

A tradition of student gardening

Student gardening was food for thought in Rochester more than 70 years ago, when the Rochester Kiwanis Club invited Paul Jones, chairman of horticulture at Fordson High School in Dearborn, to speak about his school’s gardening program, which was part of Fordson’s science curriculum.

In May 1938, the Rochester Clarion reported that, “According to Jones, fourteen acres of land are devoted to the school gardens and there are several hundred under cultivation. The children work one hour and a half each day in their gardens under supervision, carried throughout the summer months.”

The article also stated that “children are not taught primarily what things to grow in a garden, but mainly how to grow things well. ... When the vegetables are gathered from the gardens, the children are taught to deliver them in good condition to their mothers.”

Fordson High School’s gardens produced so many vegetables that parents of the student gardeners received 65 percent of their living out of the gardens.

As the Rochester Clarion noted, the presentation was of interest to Kiwanis members DeVere Carter and Maurice Thompson, both of whom were leaders of Kiwanis 4-H Garden Clubs in Rochester. At that time, the Kiwanis 4-H clubs conducted a number of gardening programs for students, including contests for creating home and farm gardens.

Seed company saw potential in Rochester

Teaching children about farming and gardening was a natural extension of Rochester’s agrarian roots. Rochester and Avon Township (now Rochester Hills) were, after all, agricultural communities with an abundance of land that made farming a way of life for many, if not most, residents – even up to the middle of the 20th century.

D.M. Ferry & Co. of Detroit, one of the first companies to package vegetable and flower seeds and sell them in stores, saw potential in the Rochester area's available land. By 1913, the company had purchased more than 600 acres of land in Avon Township to expand its operation and relocate its experimental and trial gardens along Hamlin Road.

According to the website for the , the company harvested and bred seeds in Avon Township and eventually sold them to farmers across the United States and in several countries, including Canada, England, France and Japan.

The company was a major local manufacturer and employer and continued to expand through the years by building barns, greenhouses and boarding houses for employees. Sheep and horses also grazed the company grounds. In 1929, it merged with the C.C. Morse Seed Co. of San Francisco and was renamed the Ferry-Morse Seed Company.

By 1940, “with the increase in population and home gardens near the seed company,” the museum’s website notes, “problems with cross-contamination occurred.”

The company ceased operations in Avon Township in 1944 and is now located in Fulton, KY.

Students plant a community flower garden

At the moment, there’s no evidence that vegetable gardening was part of the curriculum in Rochester schools during the late 1930s. But one school did create a community flower garden.

In 1938, Rochester’s Junior High School, located where the school district’s administration building now stands on the corner of University and Wilcox, transformed gravel and stone into beds of flowers and grass as part of a program sponsored by the Junior Red Cross – a partnership program between the nation’s schools and the American Red Cross.

In October 1938, the Rochester Clarion called the new garden “Everyone’s flower garden ... because it would have been impossible to have this beauty spot for our daily pleasure had we not had the cooperation and hard work of many concerned.”

The students were assisted by Harold N. Coulter of the Ferry-Morse Seed Co., who provided advice, flowers, plants and company gardeners to assist in the landscaping and planting. Stones were donated by local men for a rock garden, and school janitors worked “hard and long,” the paper reported.

After school, junior high boys and girls “used rakes and hoes diligently and carried many, many stones.” Children from the lower grades through high school “contributed also by playing elsewhere and keeping off the freshly made beds and lawns,” the Rochester Clarion noted. The paper also gave a nod to the school board, Superintendent A.L. Cook and faculty for their support of the project.

A tradition continues

More than 70 years later, the idea to teach Rochester students about horticulture and science through gardening at school has been revitalized by Susan Gerrits and the McGregor PTA. 

After a 2001 renovation project stripped the school of its plants and shrubs, McGregor Elementary was in need of some landscaping to improve its exterior appearance. In the fall of 2009, Principal Sharen Howard asked the McGregor PTA if it could help by planting a few shrubs and flowers.

With no money in the budget for plants, the PTA began raising funds with a jar labeled simply “Pennies for Plants” that was placed in the school office. Community Lifestyles reported Dec. 28, 2009, that the McGregor PTA estimated it would cost $120 to plant a garden bed and had so far collected $50.

The PTA reached out to local merchants, asking for their help with fundraising and planting.

, a downtown Rochester gift boutique, answered the call and donated scented pencils for a school fundraiser. The local donated topsoil, while the local chapter of the National Women’s Farm & Garden Association donated $250. Parents and supporters donated plants and clippings from their own gardens. In addition, expert gardener Carole Delater volunteered to offer advice and suggestions and drew landscaping plans for the entire school building.

The first garden was pieced together through these donations and was named "Mr. McGregor’s Garden" after the school’s namesake, Howard McGregor, who donated the land for the school.

A greener lesson plan

While the McGregor gardening and landscaping project was under way, the PTA formed the Green Committee with the hope of establishing a recycling program at the school. In need of a storage shed to contain the recycling, Gerrits approached for a donation. She was advised to apply for a company grant.

Lowe's maximum grant was $5,000, so Gerrits applied for the full amount and immediately put a gardening wish list together and asked teachers what they could use to teach science in their classrooms.

As she saw it, the school’s efforts to go green coincided perfectly with gardening.

She told Community Lifestyles that the PTA’s green initiatives would carry through to the gardens by “planting native, low-maintenance plants using organic methods.

“Gardening provides wonderful opportunities to reinforce what students learn in the classroom," Gerrits told the paper. "There is not much about gardening that doesn’t fit in with the science curriculum: ecosystems, the life cycle of plants, how weather affects plant growth; it’s all in the garden.”

Gerrits hit upon some of the same reasons why Kiwanis and local educators encouraged student gardening seven decades ago. This time, though, the garden education project was going further than anyone ever dreamed back then.

Lowe's awarded the McGregor PTA the full amount of the grant in 2010, allowing the group to create a gardening program beyond what anyone at McGregor first imagined. Among the items the grant has and will pay for are boulders, trees, shrubs, flowers, bulbs, seeds, topsoil, a picnic table, solar water fountain, composter, rain barrel, thermometer, rain gauges and garden tools.

The grant also allows for the creation of two outdoor classrooms and may help McGregor become an official Michigan Green School, as defined by the 2006 Legislature.

How does their garden grow?

Last year, additional flower beds began popping up all around McGregor Elementary.

A second garden was planted by fourth- and fifth-grade students who are members of the school’s Community Service Involvement (CSI) organization. They donated half of their earnings from a blanket raffle to create the garden, and so it was named the CSI Garden. Recently, the group used money from another blanket raffle to purchase a garden bench.

A third garden features only native plants and was funded, in part, with $250 from the Wildflower Association of Michigan. It has been named Gerrits Garden in honor of the woman who has left an indelible mark on the McGregor landscape. Gerrit and the PTA hope the native plants will attract native insects, such as the endangered Karner blue butterfly, which lives only in Wisconsin and southern Michigan.

Plans are in the works to transform a small courtyard at the school into an outdoor science laboratory, which will include a pumpkin patch (to be planted by first-graders), a rain barrel and a solar water fountain along with wild strawberries, a fairy garden and a child statue donated by school board member Beth Talbert.

The entire perimeter of the school building has been landscaped. Shrubs now stand near the school’s main entrance; a donated arbor with flowering vines faces the lower elementary playground; and Michigan limestone benches have been installed for the outdoor classrooms, where teachers and students will study native plants, animals and weather and conduct experiments with wind and solar energy.

“It has been such a joy to work with the students, staff, parent volunteers and the ever-supportive teachers at McGregor,” said Gerrits. “I have also found that there is a wealth of volunteer talent out there in the community just waiting to be asked to share their knowledge and time with us.”

McGregor's principal said she "can hardly wait until spring to see all the beautiful gardens that were planted by parents, teachers and students.

"Each one was the result of a collaboration with master gardeners and is a natural piece of artwork," Howard said. "In a city atmosphere, these gardens allow us to take one step closer to understanding the beauty of nature."

This fall, McGregor Elementary will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Among the events planned for the occasion are tours of the gardens, showcasing the school's progress through the years as well as how it has remained rooted in Rochester's agricultural past.

When asked about her hopes for the future of McGregor’s gardens, Gerrits said: “First and foremost, (my hope) is that the outdoor space will be used as an extension of the classroom.

"I hope that teachers will find ways to integrate outdoor education into all aspects of the curriculum," she said. "I hope that students will have the opportunity to reconnect with nature and to develop a sense of wonder about what is waiting for them right outdoors.”