Russell's Visually Impaired Students Enjoy a Day at Historic Mableton Community Garden

I recently took on a volunteer position as co garden coordinator at Historic Mableton Community Garden located on Floyd Road across from the Mable House in Mableton GA.  This is a labor of love for me especially when the job includes spending time with the visually impaired kids from Russell  Elementary School. Some of the kids were as young as 3 and 4 years old but they were very excited to spend some time in the garden.  It was a very cold and windy day and I was a bit concerned about the weather but I remembered how much I enjoyed going outside during the school day no matter how cold it was so we bundled up and enjoyed the sunshine.  Although most of them had little to no vision, they used their sense of smell, taste and touch to experience the garden in a different way.

We started by introducing the kids to one of my favorite plants, the rosemary bush, it is a good plant to use as a teaching tool because it is an evergreen that can withstand the cold winter here in our area and it has texture that is quite different and easy to identify by touch. After touching the rosemary we asked them to take a smell of it and enjoy the relaxing holistic benefits of rosemary.  We would have tasted it but I felt it best not to take a chance on someone being allergic to it although they had already been exposed to the oils by touching the needles of the bush.  I snipped a few sprigs from one of the larger rosemary bushes for the class to take back with them and start to grow their own plant from the cutting.  I also gave them a pack of winter peas to start indoors so that the kids could experience gardening right now.  The peas will grow pretty quickly and the kids will be able to experience the soil and then the peas starting to grow out of the soil into a long plant.

We sat in the garden all bundled up and read a story about being good stewards of the  planet and how to make good choices about recycling.  I would love to work with the visually impaired to teach the benefits of gardening.  It is possible to work in the garden with the use touch, taste, sound and smell without vision.  Yes sound is part of gardening because you hear nature as you work the garden. It is the sound of the birds and the bees working along with you.  There were no bees working but certainly there are birds still around even in the winter.  I would encourage anyone who is visually impaired to try gardening, I think it can be very rewarding and there are so many different herbs to put in an herb garden that would be a delight to the senses and serves as a mood booster.  Not only could you grow herbs but you can further the experience by using the herbs that you grow in food or in craft projects.

 For more infor on starting a garden at your school feel free to contact Farmer Terri  at 

territhefarmer@gmail  678 600 7409