Neighborhood taps Duke Doing Good grant for support
The front entrance at E.K. Powe Elementary has bloomed into a vibrant green space, humming with life, color, and activity. Long green beans dangle from trellises. Huge okra pods poke outside their beds. Bees buzz the flowers. Students turn compost bins.
After a community effort to refresh and reactivate this space last year, the produce and local reactions are bountiful.
“We’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on what the gardens look like, and they grew a lot last year,” said Bridget Bell, who served as the Chair of the PTA’s Gardens and Grounds Committee for the 2023-24 school year. “They sent tons of greens home with kids, and it’s been a positive experience all around.”
Tya Tyrrell, a former teacher and current IB/Magnet Coordinator at E.K. Powe, drove the plan that has yielded beautiful results in its first year. She also made sure the garden design was inclusive of different types of mobility, providing ways to tend plants without having to work all the way down on the ground.
“Gardening is one of my own passions personally,” said Tyrrell. “There is a lot of research that shows gardening is good for kids. It benefits their mental health and teaches them how to self-regulate a little better. Plus, kids sometimes think their food comes from the grocery store and now they can actually see that it’s produced in nature.”
“There is a lot of research that shows gardening is good for kids. It is good for their mental health and teaches them how to self-regulate a little better.”
TYA TYRRELL, IB/MAGNET COORDINATOR AT E.K.POWE ELEMENTARY
Gardening club kicks off
Tyrrell is leading the after-school gardening club which recently started up for the new school year. She told the students: “We’re going to work on cleaning up so we can do our fall planting here next week with seeds.”
The students reveled in their assignment. After collecting tools from the shed and being coached to pull out everything in the two trellis beds, they faced their task. First, though, they digressed into examining the longest string beans they had ever seen. Tyrrell explained it was a version of the plant she became familiar with in New Orleans. “This is really good!” one young taster concluded.
After some initial hesitancy, the students got down to business, digging out large plants from their roots and dislodging the remaining vines from the arches above. Maiana Phasey, a third grader reported, “Pulling out the old stuff was a bit hard, but it was fun. The hardest part was getting all the stuff we pulled into the compost bins.”
Garden seeds new learning possibilities
As E.K. Powe is in the process of becoming an IB school, Tyrrell is already planning how the garden will support the new curricula. From supporting international research (focusing on how different seeds came to the US) to experiential lessons for a host of subjects, she sees many ways teachers can leverage the garden to increase hands-on learning. “[One of the IB units] is called Sharing the Planet. We’re going to talk about natural and renewable resources, so I can already envision how the garden is going to help expand on that theme for us.”
A team effort from the start
The garden project was truly a collaborative community effort from the get-go. As Bell recapped, “Fred [Broadwell] from the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association contacted me to let me know Duke has some money to put toward community projects. We put together a wish list with Tya. We got with Noam from Grow it Yourself to see what was feasible within the parameters of the budget and went from there. It was super seamless, and everyone was good to work with.”
“It was super seamless, and everyone was good to work with.”
BRIDGET BELL, PTA GARDENS AND GROUNDS CHAIR (2023-24), E.K.POWE ELEMENTARY
Local resident and business owner Noam Oshry’s Grow It Yourself is dedicated to helping people grow their own food. His knowledge and raised bed construction helped create a garden that produced green beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, okra, and lots and lots of greens. Bell and Tyrrell also expressed appreciation for the Hub Farm which donated several starter plants.
Bell explained Grow It Yourself “built these trellises for the climbing plants. And the beans went crazy. They climbed all over the trellis and were hanging down. It’s just really pretty, in addition to being productive.”
Duke Doing Good dollars leveraged to fill funding gap
Creating sustainable beds required some funding, especially for irrigation to make sure the beds could be maintained over the summer. Putting the challenge into perspective, Bell said that “money is an obstacle. Our school is a Title One school so the PTA is always trying to bring as much cool stuff to all the kids as they can.”
The Duke Doing Good grant they received was “huge because public school funding is stretched and the PTA is a 501(c)3 based completely on donations. So, a couple of grand can actually be really huge for a public school trying to get stuff done.” Bell also noted the simple grant process: “I really appreciated the Doing Good process was easy. We weren’t bogged down with a complex application process, which was very helpful since most of us are volunteers.”
“A couple of grand can actually be really huge for a public school trying to get stuff done.”
BRIDGET BELL, PTA GARDENS AND GROUNDS CHAIR (2023-24), E.K.POWE ELEMENTARY
Old West Durham is one of the 14 neighborhoods in the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, a cooperative community engagement effort that has continued for almost thirty years. Jesse Huddleston, one of the Senior Program Coordinators on the Duke Community Affairs team, manages the Doing Good Housing & Neighborhoods grant fund and is glad to see partner neighbors making optimal use of the money raised by fellow Duke employees. “From my vantage point, so many people have benefited from this project – students, parents, educators, neighbors, and more,” said Huddleston. “I hope as people working at Duke see the impact of Doing Good grants, they will continue to give as much as they are able. Their contributions make a significant difference.”
This grant from Duke isn’t the only way the university supports the beautification and maintenance of the school’s grounds.
“It’s also worth noting that Duke Gardens also provides all the mulch that we use around the school,” said Bell. “They have a truck and, whenever we need it, they drop it for us for free which is awesome.”
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