by Jose Jovel
The seeds have been planted; the sun is shining. There is hope.
Pueblo High School’s Garden Club has big plans for the 2021-22 school year, and they have already begun to plant new vegetation—setting their goals high for a productive year and a promising future.
The club will continue the reconstruction of the garden and discuss new directions for Pueblo’s little acre of botanical bliss.
One of the club’s primary goals is to continue to clean and clear the garden after it was destroyed two years ago. (Those responsible for the garden’s “massacre” have never been determined.)
With new enthusiastic sponsors and a tenacious group of students, everybody in this club is ready to roll up his and her sleeves and get a little dirty.
Pueblo science teachers Mr. Nicolas Pitts and Ms. Melissa Espindola, this year’s Garden Club sponsors, are eager to provide learning opportunities for students this school year and for years to come.
“We don’t know exactly what happened to the garden two years ago, but everybody in the Garden Club is excited to make the garden better than ever,” Espindola said.
Garden Club member, sophomore Jolette Coronado, said, “Working on this garden provides new opportunities to learn. We are planting foods that we can actually eat as well as learning how to nurture to everything that we grow.” She paused and said, “Everybody in the club is excited about our harvests after all of our hard work.”
Pitts said, “The Garden Club will definitely live on but in a new direction.” He added that the garden will take multiple years to return to its original state, but he hopes that new students in the club will be creative and add their own footprints to the garden.
Every student is welcome to join the club; meetings are held Thursdays after school. Everybody is encouraged to share ideas how to resurrect the garden and bring new life to the northwestern corner of Pueblo’s campus.
“We already have all the garden beds working,” said Pitts. “We’re on our way to making this garden a new learning environment for all teachers and students.”