Bierbaum Elemantry School’s garden club was recently awarded a $5,000 Scott Credit Union Community Foundation With You Grant, propelling the group’s dream of increasing planting space to a reality.

“That’s the part that’s really fun, getting your hands dirty and planting,” Jennifer Smith-Simms — manager of public programs within the education division of the Missouri Botanical Garden — said. Smith-Simms has been an integral part of the club since its founding five years ago, having co-founded it with now-retired Bierbaum educator Celeste Pounds. “These kids really want to grow food because they want to taste everything. They want pollinators. They want to see more critters. They really soak that stuff in.”

Per Smith-Simms, a landscape designer has taken measurements of the area and is in the process of figuring out what can be done within the allotted budget and space. A shed for tools, new tools and raised bed material will likely be what the grant funds. With the added space provided by the raised beds, there will be room to plant pumpkins and watermelons, a longtime dream of the young garden club members.

Now in its fifth year, the garden club is larger than it’s ever been at approximately 50 members ranging from third through fifth grade.

The club meets monthly after school to tend to their plants, observe critters, make crafts, learn about nature and, of course, play outside in the fresh air. At the end of each school year, the crops are harvested for consumption. As the garden is only operated during the months that school is in session and has limited growing space, lettuce of all varieties have been the main edible plants grown.

“We do some flowers. We do some vegetables. At the end of the year, we do a salad party with everything that we’ve grown, so that’s a lot of fun. We do a lot of research into what kinds of plants grow around here natively, what the kids want to plant, what their dream garden would be,” Sarah Kelce, academic interventionalist at Bierbaum and one of the garden club sponsors, said.

“When they can harvest that lettuce and have salad, it’s like they might be eating caviar. It’s funny because there’ll be kids that want seconds, thirds,” Smith-Simms added. “At first, they’re like, ‘Why would I eat that?’ Then they try it and they love it.We’ve done chard, spinach, kale. We do the different lettuces, red and speckled and green. We’ve done different herbs. We even did pansies, the pansy flowers are edible, so we’ll harvest those and put them on their salad.”

Kelce was the brains behind the grant application, after being made aware of the opportunity by Bierbaum principal Paul Morris. Her application emphasized the community the grant would benefit — many students at the school live in apartments or condos, having little to no regular access to green space — as well as the educational possibilities of tying the garden into literacy, science and math curricula.

For Smith-Simms, increasing access to gardening hits home, as she grew up in a nearby apartment in the district and even attended Bierbaum herself as a child. She laughed that it’s “still trippy” coming to the school each month.

“(When) they see something grow, they’re more apt to want to eat it, to understand it. It kind of sticks with them,” she said. “It’s pure joy coming here.”