Gardening on the Cay
Garden for Well-Being
Ongoing Civic Projects - Schools
We work on many exciting projects, sharing the positive impact of gardens on the lives of others. Members have built and continue to maintain a variety of gardens and landscape containers at local schools, sharing the uplifting effect of a garden's beauty and aiding in the protection of pollinators for a healthy environment.
Growing Youth Interest in Gardening
Partnership with Parent Teacher Associations and Principals to add plantings to school entrances and enliven school grounds. Elementary school partnerships began in 2015 with the installation of planters at the schools entrances. GOTC continues to maintain these gardens.
Riverview Elementary: Planters and Carolina Fence Garden
Certified by the National Wildlife Federation as a School House
Habitat, and as a Carolina Fence Garden
- Installed Spring 2019
Tega Cay Elementary: Planters and Butterfly Garden
Recognized as a Monarch Way Station by Monarch Watch.org
- Installed Spring 2017
Anne Springs Close Greenway
Tiny Sprouts and Wee Sprouts Garden Clubs
Working with the staff at Anne Springs Close Greenway ("ASCG"), a 2100 acre nature park in the center of Fort Mill, SC:
In early 2019, our club members adopted a garden adjacent to the Adventure Center on the Anne Springs Close Greenway; members built new beds and began teaching preschool classes about nature - planting a variety of vegetables with the children. "Tiny Sprouts" as we call them, are taught about growing things, the importance of pollinators, worms, the right type of soil and more. We later moved to the Nature Center, and the children followed; taught how to build bee cafes in containers, helped explore fall plants, and more!
We have now expanded to two pre-school programs, Tiny Sprouts (4-year-olds turning five) and Wee Sprouts (3-year-olds turning four), as well as maintaining a Par Garden plot with the children. The children are able to plant, help to thin, weed, and then harvest their crops for people who don’t have access to the fresh vegetables. They, of course, will also get to “sample” a few of them.
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