Sophomore Esther Yim strolls in with the Arizona Tea cans with water to water the plants. She carefully places the cart to a side and walk into the Lit Center classroom to water the plants. Yim and vice president, Asma Hussain, bend over the plants to water them carefully as the club sponsor, Vanessa Brechling, and creator of the club, Aisha Malik, discuss things to include in a CGSI proposal. People casually walk in a take a seat while discussions about the proposal continue.
Gardening club was created late last year because of the hard work of sophomore Malik. Malik colaborated with many people before she was directed to Brechling who shared the same passion for gardening.
“I sponsor gardening club because I am a gardener and I love to get my hands dirty. I do all my own gardening at home–including vegetable gardening. Aisha Malik, the previous president of the gardening club, asked Mrs. Bills if she would sponsor it, but [Bills] is afraid of worms, so told Aisha to come and ask me and I was very happy to find a group of students who are interested in gardening,” Brechling said.
Between discussions about the proposal, Malik had time to talk about her passion for gardening.
“When I was in Pakistan I found a book about indoor plants, which interested me. When I came here, I wanted to garden, but I lived in an apartment so I wanted to be able to garden here [at school],” said Malik.
Gardening club plants many different things to enhance the school’s look. Gardening club is currently working on a CGSI proposal to get money.
“We have been writing a proposal for a vegetable garden in the courtyard. GCSI wil hopefully be funding us to plant several raised beds, so we can experiment with different types of indigenous and non-native vegetables,” Brechling said. “We will build our beds and use composted soil–all organic! We hope to involve some other classes, especially the life skills classes with our building and gardening maintenance. We will also invite any other class or club to visit the garden and learn about how different plants grow. We hope to generate enough produce to make donations to the local food pantries. We just want to beautify the school with greenery and raise awareness about how much fun gardening can be,” said Brechling.
President of the club and sophomore Ariella Halevi thinks this club is a good place to come for people who are interested in gardening.
“This club’s a very warm and welcoming committee that works to beautify the school. If you like getting your hands dirty come to gardening club,” said Halevi.
Gardening club members hung around chatting and watering plants as the head members of the club continuously looked over the proposal to make sure everything was perfect.
The club members hung around for some time but soon left the head members of the club alone to work.
“It’s a good club to join because we take care of the environment and make people happy when they look at plants,” said Hussain.
Gardening Club meets every Thursday at 3:30 pm in the Lit Center.
