Strawberries, carrots, cucumbers, blackberries, cherry tomatoes and green bell peppers grow together in sophomore Cooper Buckallew’s backyard garden.

“We have this little patch of dirt and we were like, ‘why don’t we make this into a garden?’” Buckallew said.

Buckallew and his dad, Scott, started the garden in October, he said.

“We just catch up with each other because since my parents are separated, I don’t really get to see them that often,” Cooper said.

Cooper said his dad is teaching him how to garden now.

Like Cooper, Nicole Scherder, language arts teacher, said gardening can be beneficial to relationships as well as mental health.

“It makes you get outside of yourself, outside of your head, and just focus on that connection between your body and the earth,” she said.

She and her husband, Jay, started gardening together in 2013 when they moved into their house, and then started their next garden in 2018 when they moved into their current house. It’s nearly 10 square feet, Nicole said.

“My husband does a lot of the planting and the strategy,” Scherder said. “I do a lot of the harvesting.”

Nicole said they grow a lot of lettuce which saves her money.

“I’ll go the entire summer without buying lettuce,” Nicole said.

Scherder said she also gardens with her kids, Charlie, and Evie. 

“My kids won’t usually eat vegetables, but if there’s a tomato on the vine, they will,” Scherder said.

Scherder said gardening can also help people grow in character, especially in patience.

“There’s something to be said for waiting and reaping the benefits,” Scherder said. “Something from the garden tastes a lot better than something you can eat at the store.”

Jasmine Toofan, sophomore, has been gardening for as long as she can remember. Toofan said her family often garden to connect with each other and with nature.

Toofan and her dad, Paul, have grown flowers, fruits, and vegetables together every year and right now they are growing mint, parsley, peppers, and cucumbers.

“I just love planting flowers and then watching them grow because I think that’s so beautiful,” Jasmine said. “And also I love growing fruits and vegetables and then just going out to the garden and eating them, because I can say ‘Wow, I’m eating this. It’s delicious, and I grew it.’”

Jasmine said gardening has taught her skills that transfer to other areas in life. 

“It teaches you to take care of something,” she said. “You plant it, you have to go out and water it, keep an eye on it, keep it safe, and then you bring it up from a seed to an entire plant.”

Her next project is a wildflower garden. She bought seeds and planted them all in a flower bed and said she looks out her window every day to see if the wildflowers have grown.

“It’s kind of a slow process, but you need to wait because in the end it will turn out to be really beautiful,” Jasmine said.