Heritage Elementary celebrates food security and backyard gardens with Shaome Cooperative collaboration

Heritage Elementary School students will get their hands dirty as part of a food security project in collaboration with a new Macon-based cooperative.  

School officials and members of Shaome Cooperative gathered at Heritage Elementary  off of Thomaston Road Thursday afternoon for a ribbon cutting ceremony unveiling raised bed gardens and plans for a food forest on school grounds. 

Food forests are self-sustaining sources of food that mimic natural woodland. The food forest at Heritage will contain a fruit or nut tree surrounded by six layers of perennial plants. 

Two Heritage teachers serve on Shaome’s board of directors and encouraged the collaboration between the school and the food security nonprofit, which focuses on backyard gardens and food forests. 

“So many of our students don’t necessarily see where food comes from,” Heritage principal Donna Cline said. “We want them to know that you can actually grow it right in your own backyard.”

Shaome Cooperative provided the dirt, boxes, seeds, and plants along with a curriculum for students to follow. Students will learn how to tend a garden, how each plant grows and how weather affects its growth. 

The raised bed gardens — one for each grade level — sit near the playground, explained Cline, so students can see the growth in real time.

Although Shaome’s collaboration with Heritage is a pilot program, focusing on elementary-aged students, Shaome president Chelsea McClain told The Melody she hopes to plant seeds in every school. 

“Our vision is to have food forests all over the state so that people can walk down the street or walk in a public park and grab a snack,” she said. “There will be no more food deserts that way.”

In addition to developing the food forest themselves, students will soon plant winter crops, like collards, cabbage, carrots and broccoli in the garden beds.

“Food security is your life,” Shaome board member Yvonne Mourfield said. “Food security is your being, your physical health.”

To volunteer with Shaome visit shaome.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/shaome/projectList.jsp