A true community effort
After months and months of planning and hoping to create a community garden for the students and families of Sierra Vista Elementary School, a collection of community leaders combined their forces to turn this dream into a reality.
Sierra Vista Elementary School is tranforming a portion of their campus grounds into an outdoor learning center. In it, the school community will enjoy a garden filled with over a dozen fruit and vegetable planters, flowers, trees, and picnic/learning tables. This area will be the site of application-based classroom exercises, where the students will learn how to plant, nurture, and harvest “home” grown foods, which can and will appear on their dinner tables.
The school is located in North Reno…adjacent to the UNR campus. Many families live according to limited financial means and would benefit significantly from the school’s community garden.
The community garden project is being made possible thanks to many community members, including:
- Christie & Bruce Gescheider of Moana Nursery – for donating many garden supplies
- Western Nevada Supply
- Leonard Guevara and his Safe Harbors crew of workers
- Western Turf & Hardscapes
- John Theelander, who donated and manned the bobcat
- John Anderson from WCSD’s Capital Projects department
- Jim Pfrommer, board member for the Education Alliance
- Jonna AuCoin, Sierra Vista Elementary School Principal
- Christina Burr, Sierra Vista Elementary School educator and garden architect
- Reno Lions Club for donating trees
- Garden Shop Nursery for their work on the water main
- Truckee River Rock
The garden project is not complete. Once the construction of the garden is finalized, the students and teachers need tools, materials, and seeds to create their gardens. This is where more community members are needed. Moana Nursery has kindly created “classroom kits” for each class to utilize as they create, nurture, and harvest the fruit and vegetables in their garden. Each kit contains the following:
- 1 – Two Gallon Watering Can
- 2 – Pair of Children’s Gloves
- 1 – Pair of Adult Gloves
- 2 – Trowels
- 1 – Hand Cultivator
- 1 – Kid’s Shovel
- 1 – Pruner
- 1 – Shears
- 1 – 4 lb. bag of Dr. Earth Tomato, Herb & Vegetable Fertilizer
- 1 – Dr. Earth Final Stop Insect Spray
- 4 – Seed packets (to be selected by the students and teachers)
Our goal is to provide one kit to each of the nine classrooms.
To purchase one or more Classroom Kits, donors may visit Moana Nursery (Moana shop only) and make the purchase at the counter. Donors may also purchase the kits online at a special Sierra Vista Elementary School – Garden Project giving page located on the GiftingWishes website. 100% of every donation will be used as each donor indicates…the GiftingWishes owners are waiving any costs associated with the online purchases. In addition, they’ve already donated financial resources, as well as nearly 100 hours into the project. Please note that each donor will be recognized and thanked, thus making the Community Garden Center a “true community effort.”
Click here for photos from the initial construction.
Click here for photos of the handicap walkway installation and tree planting.
Donate to the project today by clicking on…
