Gardening with Kids

Daily Hours: 2
Total Hours: 82

This afternoon,  I was in charge of setting up for the "Gardening for Kids" workshop that was part of the educational series running throughout the summer in conjunction with the seed library.  Beth Hanna from Community Groundworks gave the presentation, talking about school gardening programs in WI and ending with a make-your-own newspaper pot activity.

Unfortunately, only a mother, her two small children, and an older gentleman, who happened to run the Horticulture Club at MATC, showed up for the program.  I had been nervous about attendance numbers all week since I called and left messages for the four people who had registered in advance through the e-vance calendar online.  Plus, today was Rhythm and Booms and all of John Nolen was closed.  There is just always so much going on in Madison!  It's become obvious to me now how much little things can affect attendance; for example, Chis offhandedly mentioned that storytime numbers are usually much lower when the parking lot is full; parents will just go home rather than park far away (obviously a downside of sharing parking with so many other businesses and organizations!).  We did manage to round up a few kids who were already in the library for the pot making activity, so that was good.

There's always a bright side to things though, and I was able to do a bit of seed library networking with both Beth and the older gent; both wanted information to bring back to their respective organizations.  Beth was even talking about doing a partnership mini-garden next season through their kids program where they would grow a plot with seeds from the library and then save them as an experiment.  We did a quick brainstorm of how things would work, possibly an outreach visit from us or a field trip to the library for them, a great opportunity to educate them on all the resources the library can provide beyond the seeds...