Nursery lends a hand for school's garden

Paradise Elementary students plant flowers and vegetables

dale dombrowski/viewSteve Torres, right, holds a marigold for Aaron Gifford, 5. Students at Paradise Elementary School, 900 Cottage Grove Ave., planted flowers donated by Star Nursery, March 27. dale dombrowski/viewYaira Mendoza, 5, rakes away loose dirt so she can plant a marigold at Paradise Elementary School. Advertisement

Paradise Elementary School gets by with a little help from its friends. Late last month, Star Nursery, UNLV, Pavestone and McCarthy Building Cos. came together to help the campus' smallest students build a garden.

Volunteers from the organizations built four flower-veggie beds at the school, 900 Cottage Grove Ave., after which pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classes planted a mix of peppers, tomatoes, flowers and cilantro in the garden.

"We are out here every day for outdoor activity," said Nichola Perillo, pre-kindergarten teacher. "This would be something to learn from."

Through the Focus School Project, Clark County schools are matched with organizations to bring needed resources to students. The project, which began in 1989, is a part of the Clark County School District's School-Community Partnership program.

"It is really a great concept and provides a lot of different things for many of our schools," Frank Rauscher from Star Nursery said.

"The project at Paradise Elementary is part of this partnership concept, although I was asked for assistance on this outside of the Focus Partnership program," Rauscher said. "It is our goal to help each school with their objective, and in this case, by providing some vegetable garden areas, it helps to encourage their students to develop an interest in plants and gardening."

Kid-sized gloves, gardening tools and watering cans were laid out for the Paradise students, and when they received their cue from Rauscher, the kids got busy gardening.

"I don't usually plant gardens at my house because I have rocks," pre-kindergartner Maria Hafferty said.

Perillo said her students can work on math, size, growth and colors using the garden, so she expects it will be a useful learning tool.

"We read stories about plants," pre-kindergartner Jacqueline Guevara said.

During the event at Paradise, Rauscher taught the children how to place plants in the earth properly and take care of them once they're planted.

"They're our future gardeners," Rauscher said.