Falmouth Elementary Celebrates Project Learning Garden Grant
Grant from Captain Planet Foundation and Cox Enterprises will help maintain the garden and establish an after-school cooking club.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Twenty elementary schools in Northern Virginia received Project Learning Garden grants from Cox Enterprises and the Captain Planet Foundation this spring, but only one—Falmouth Elementary in Stafford—was chosen to host a special event Thursday morning highlighting the program.
“You guys had such an awesome grant application,” said Kathryn Falk, Cox Communications’s vice president for Northern Virginia, to a group of 3rd-graders gathered near the school’s learning garden.
Falk was joined at the school by representatives from the Captain Planet Foundation and other Cox companies; Delegate Josh Cole; Meg Bohmke, the Falmouth representative to the Board of Supervisors; School Board Chair Maureen Siegmund, and Bill Ashton, the county administrator to celebrate the grant.
Students harvested baby lettuce, herbs, and spring onions from the learning garden, which they started about six weeks ago, and made them into salad with olive oil, vinegar, and mandarin oranges.
At the end of the event, the garbage can was full of empty paper bowls—clear evidence that the students enjoyed the salad and had definintely eaten their vegetables.
The Project Learning Garden grant paid for a cooking cart and supplies, as well as seeds, shovels, watering cans, and a $500 gift card to Gardener’s Supply Company, 3rd grade teacher Angela Formica said. In addition to helping students maintain the learning garden, the funding will help Formica establish an after-school cooking club, which she will co-lead with the school nurse.
Formica applied for the grant this year. She said the school’s PTO had purchased and installed a number of raised garden beds about eight years ago, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, “they kind of got forgotten about.”
“So now we’re reinvigorating them,” Formica said.
Formica said she grew up on a farm and always had access to fresh vegetables.
“I want to give that same gift to these children,” she said. “There’s a quote I always steal from Audrey Hepburn: ‘To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.’”
In the grant application, Formica laid out her plan for how the learning garden can be incorporated into the entire K-5 curriculum in ways that go beyond science.
For example, one of the raised beds will be used to plant peanuts, which ties into the 4th grade Virginia Studies curriculum, and Formica uses the raised beds to teach students how to calculate area and perimeter.
Falk said that Formica’s passion for gardening and the lessons it can impart came through clearly in the grant application, which is why Falmouth Elementary was selected for Thursday’s event.
She said the overarching goal of the Cox companies, as expressed by founder James Cox more than 100 years ago, is to “care for our employees and our communities.”
“We have to be good community participants,” Falk said to the students. “If we do that, business will take care of itself, and we’ll be building a brighter future for the next generation—you guys.”
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