GRAND RAPIDS -- Students tilled under 10,000 square feet of lawn at City High/Middle School into a garden plot on Friday to grow wheat this winter, and tomatoes, beans, melons and lettuce next spring.
Students and staff also hope to grow local awareness of how urban gardens can stimulate the local economy, improves public health and protect and global warming.
"It looks like a small garden, but it's a large step for City and for sustainability," said Dan Anderson, a former teacher at the school who has returned to mentor students in the gardening project.
The garden is the first step in a 10-year plan to transform City's 23-acres on Fuller Ave. NE -- including the school's seven-acre roof -- into a more natural green space.
Plans are to construct a 1-mile circuit training fitness track around the school, construct an outdoor education pavilion, and allow part of the Grand Rapids Public Schools campus to return to natural grasses and wetlands.
"The key to survival is re-learning how to live," said Michael Boosamra, a teacher in City's School of Economicology, which enrolls 43 seventh-graders. "We not only have some of the highest-achieving students in the state in terms of standardized test scores, we have students who are learning what it means to be stewards of the earth."
The program's name comes from Peter Wege's 1998 book "Economicology," a word coined from "economics" and "ecology," which reflects Wege's philosophy that a thriving economy requires a healthy environment.
Wege's foundation, represented at the groundbreaking by Terri McCarthy, is among the backers of the urban garden project, which supports the global ethics goals of City's International Baccalaureate program.
The School of Business and Entrepreneurship at Ottawa Hills High School will also develop a marketing plan for the garden's bounty, although it has not yet been determined whether produce will be sold or distributed through food banks, said Matt Gonzales, assistant principal.
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