On a crisp, bluebird February afternoon, the sound of drilling echoed between two greenhouses at Churchill County High School. Teacher Jaime Sammons instructed students to drill drainage holes in the oak barrels they converted into planters.
Each student received a barrel. They chose what to plant. The students are part of the school’s plant systems class, where they learn how to grow and nurture everything from flowers and herbs to vegetables and fruit.
Aside from learning how to maintain the plants, the students are also learning responsibility.
Sophomore Alondra Andrade is no stranger to growing vegetables. She often helps her dad with their garden at home. But this barrel garden is completely her own, and while she gets guidance on caring for it from her teacher, keeping it alive falls to her.
“It feels really trusting. She trusts us to have our own barrel and take care of it,” Andrade said.
Each student had a big vision for their harvest, which included a vining plant, floral design, sage, Rocky Mountain pine tree, blackberries, and tomatoes.
Khalid Walker spent a large chunk of the afternoon using a shovel to chip away at some frozen soil. He said the class was a welcome break from the routine school day.
“I overthink a lot, so it can kind of mess me up a little,” Walker said. “But this class gives me a break from all the other subjects that give me a hard time sometimes, gives me time to recuperate, and it’s very, very calm.”
The class has been around for two years, but in January, it got a boost after receiving $9,500 from the Nevada Outdoor Education and Recreation Grant Program.
Over the last two years, the grant has awarded $500,000 to 45 projects in Nevada, including mountain biking, beekeeping, and bird watching, according to the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
Not all kids have the opportunity to go outside, said Marlee Jenkins, a conservation district staff specialist with the department. She added that activities like gardening can create an abundance of benefits that go beyond those that are health-related.
“It kind of exposes them to different career paths,” Jenkins said. “You could go into conservation and native plants and restoration. You could go into arboriculture, caring for trees and urban forestry.”
These types of activities also get youth off their phones and computers. On average, kids across the country spend 44 hours per week in front of a screen, according to the Children & Nature Network.
The state legislature actually created the grant program in 2019, but it wasn’t state-funded until 2023. This session, Democratic Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager hopes to double it to $1 million over the next two years.
“We affectionately called it the No Child Left Inside bill, which then got an official government name after it was passed. But few things are as bipartisan as outdoor recreation, especially talking about getting kids outside and out from their devices and their laptops and their phones and all of that,” Yeager said.
Nearly two months later, students in Fallon have seen the fruits of their labor as their barrels spring to life. Sammons said the grant is providing more than money.
“It’s huge for so many reasons, just the monetary value of it, but on top of that, I tell the kids all the time, there’s people that are rooting for you that you haven’t even met.”
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