New Everson Elementary garden offers fresh learning, growing experiences

Student knowledge isn’t the only thing growing at Everson Elementary, as a new school garden on site creates a fresh opportunity for curriculum. 

In a true community effort, Everson Elementary now has a school garden, designed to offer specific curriculum opportunities for students while teaching a mix of in-class and in-garden exercises. 

The garden concept started when an Everson Elementary parent started a conversation with Everson fifth grade teachers in August 2018 on fun, new ideas for the school. The concept of a garden was discussed and Common Threads, a Bellingham-based nonprofit, was brought in to hold a short presentation with Everson staff and representatives of the Families for Everson Elementary (F4EE) parent group. 

“After the meeting, the overall consensus was that the teachers wanted to bring this program to our school, as several had already worked with them while student-teaching at other schools,” says Shannon Bosman, F4EE treasurer. The parent group paid the $3,500 to get the project started — Common Threads uses other funding to support 90 percent of its work — and when volunteers from Cornwall Church of Bellingham approached Jen Lautenbach at Everson in 2019 about ways to help the school, creating an on-site garden was on the list. 

With the garden creation happening this fall, work is well underway to get the Common Threads curriculum up and running at Everson. 

Maddy Libolt, fifth-grade teacher, says when she worked with Common Threads while teaching at Roosevelt Elementary in Bellingham five years ago, “I loved the program as much as the students did. I loved that the garden gave students opportunities to experience growing and cooking their own food, working as a team to create a space our whole school community can learn from and enjoy and supported language development through experiences.” 

Moving forward, as the garden really gets going for spring, F4EE plan to use fundraisers to help pay for the annual Common Threads curriculum and support fees and improve the space by adding a shed, watering system and fruit trees. 

“Common Threads does a nice job of supporting science standards we are already teaching in our classrooms through content taught during garden time,” Libolt says. “I hope, and know, that our students will experience all of these benefits thanks to our school garden, Families for Everson Elementary and Common Threads.”