Head Start receives funds for garden project
The Central Arkansas Development Council’s Malvern Head Start Center was recently awarded grant funds through the University of Arkansas System Cooperative Extension Service to construct indoor and outdoor gardening units.
Early Head Start Program Specialist, Debbie Harp, said Crystal Draper with the Hot Spring County Extension Office was instrumental in finding and applying for the grant.
“I’ve been working with CADC for awhile,” Draper said. Draper coordinated with Jessica Vincent from the state office of the University of Arkansas, Division of Agriculture, to secure the funds.
“We have some funds at the state office that we get,” Vincent said. “So, anytime we have a federal grant, there’s some indirect funding that we get from that. And so, we decided to distribute that to the counties.”
Both women joined Harp and several helpers on Wednesday to assemble nine raised “9 in 1” garden beds that will be located outside the learning center, along with several indoor garden kits that will be located in classrooms inside the building.
The outdoor garden beds measure 29 inches tall and can be configured according to nine various dimensions. The finished beds are 66 inches by 24 inches and will hold their first batch of plants when the fall planting season begins, at which time students and teachers will likely plant squash and turnips.
Indoor units will grow things like lettuce and tomatoes, but future plantings will be a wide variety of fruits and vegetables to be determined at a later date. Harp said the garden beds and indoor units are meant to educate the children, but parents will also benefit by sharing in the harvest.