Just like seeds planted in the spring, the new garden project at West Junior High School is filled with possibilities.

With a grant from the Douglas County Community Foundation’s Live Well initiative and donations from other groups, including The Merc, plans for a student-run garden at the school are beginning to take shape. If the garden were at an elementary school, one of the organizers said, it would be done by adults for the students, but this garden is planned as a project that will actively involve junior high students even through the summer.

Volunteers are helping prepare the planting beds and set up an irrigation system. Six junior high students will be hired and paid $7.25 an hour to work about five hours a week in the garden over the summer. There’s lots to gardening between the time the seeds are planted and the produce is harvested and working through that process will be a great lesson for youngsters.

The long-range plan is to use food produced in the garden in the school cafeteria, sell it at markets at the school and incorporate the garden into classes such as business, health, writing, photography and art. Organizers hope the West Junior High garden will be a long-term project supported by money earned from selling produce and a tentatively planned community fundraising feast next fall featuring foods from the garden.

It would be great if gardening became a lifelong hobby for some of the students. In the last couple of generations, people have become less and less connected with how their food is produced. There aren’t many family farms around these days, but many people have room for at least a small garden at their homes.

Working in the garden is a healthy outdoor activity for youngsters and will teach them a number of lessons about growing, and perhaps marketing, food. It may even make them more willing to try vegetables they would have ignored before. There’s something special about growing and harvesting vegetables and then being able to enjoy the fruits of your labor at the dinner table.

Growing a garden is a great way to encourage healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle. Hopefully the garden at West will produce a bountiful harvest of both food and educational lessons.