Students Build Garden Beds at Newhallville Middle School

King/Robinson seventh grader Dorian had a shovel in his hands and a plan. “Soon enough,” he said Friday morning, “the mood will be more beautiful here.”

He wasn’t wrong. A dozen juniors from Common Ground High School showed up at the 150 Fournier St. school in Newhallville to help King/Robinson’s student council members build new garden beds in the school’s courtyard. The project is part of a larger push by King/Robinson staff to get a functional school garden running, one that could eventually help feed the school’s families directly.

That’s not a small ambition for a Newhallville middle school.

Why This Garden Matters

King/Robinson staff secured a food insecurity grant this year to bring fresh foods to families connected to the school. The garden is the physical anchor for that effort. Valarie Knowles, the school’s discovery lab educator, and Mia Edmonds-Duff, a reading support staffer and retired principal, are leading the gardening work on the school’s end.

Knowles put it simply. “Something about being in nature makes you feel like you can do more,” she said.

The garden isn’t just about produce. Staff see it as a way to get families more connected to the school building itself, giving students and parents a sense of ownership over a shared space. Seventh graders Dorian and Milad both said they want to help make their school more beautiful. Several other student council members volunteered that they just like dirt and plants. Fair enough.

Common Ground Does the Heavy Lifting

Friday’s visit was one of 15 volunteer projects that Common Ground students took on to address real community needs. Environmental educator Melissa Gibbons and Common Ground Schoolyards Program Manager Robyn Stewart guided the high schoolers and middle schoolers through the actual construction: building the new raised beds, filling them with soil, cleaning up the courtyard space so it’s ready for vegetable planting.

Not glamorous work. But necessary.

Common Ground junior Angie emerged as an informal mentor during the morning. She helped drill the wooden bed frames together and then turned around and showed the younger students what she knew. “Most of the kids here are visual learners like me, so it was easy to show them how I learned to do most of this stuff,” she said. “Like when they would scoop up the dirt, I showed them to cup it with their hands.”

When worms and centipedes appeared in the turned soil, some students recoiled. Not Angie. She learned to get over her own fear of garden creatures and spent part of the morning coaxing them back into the dirt where they belong. Earthworms are critical to healthy garden soil, and Gibbons used every bug sighting as a quick lesson in why that’s true.

Some students came gloved and goggled. Others skipped the gear entirely to, as one seventh grader explained, “connect with Mother Nature.”

A Model Worth Watching

Common Ground, the West Rock environmental high school, has built its identity around exactly this kind of work. Placing students in real community settings, not simulated ones, is central to how the school operates. A school garden program at a food-insecure middle school checks every box: environmental education, community connection, hands-on skill building.

The King/Robinson project reporting was first covered by the New Haven Independent.

For Connecticut’s urban school districts, where food insecurity and family engagement are persistent challenges, the model playing out in Newhallville is worth taking seriously. A garden funded by a food insecurity grant, built by high school volunteers, tended by middle schoolers who helped design it. That’s a lot of return on a pile of lumber and topsoil.

Dorian, for his part, seemed ready to keep going. “I like people learning together to make something better,” he said Friday.

What’s Next

Knowles and Edmonds-Duff plan to move into planting vegetables as the season opens up. The food insecurity grant funding gives the program a financial runway, but the school will need continued volunteer support and family buy-in to make it work long term. Common Ground’s involvement this spring gives the project momentum heading into the growing season.

Watch for whether King/Robinson’s garden effort becomes a template other New Haven schools try to replicate. The ingredients are all here.