An Educational Garden at Zinsser Park

I've always wanted to produce an educational garden space for community groups, primarily for children. In May of 2024, I was approached by a Brownie troop leader, who had an established, but in poor condition, plot at the Zinsser Community Garden, and I simultaneously learned about the possibility of funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies Youth Climate Action Fund. This was an amazing coincidence, and I feel lucky and grateful for everything that helped my idea come to fruition.

The space I created permits both children and adults to learn about plants and how they benefit the environment. The totality of the garden project has been built and designed with three distinctive, yet cohesive, sections.

The perimeter portion of the garden, which consists of numerous, stepped planting boxes, allows children to learn about how pollinator plants and native plants are crucial for maintaining balance in our ecosystem. Pollinators are responsible for plants producing seeds, which allows plants to reproduce and continue their life cycle. Without sufficient pollinators, the native and interior garden plants would be unable to reproduce. The pollinator plant perimeter, in attracting pollinators, therefore helps plants in the surrounding areas survive and thrive. 

The role of native and interior garden plants is to provide food and habitat for pollinators. Native plants help stabilize the environment, as they generally do not require watering or fertilizing to be healthy. They are deep-rooted, which means they can absorb more water, tolerate drought, and help prevent runoff, and they support local insect fauna. The pollinator perimeter helps children learn not only about these concepts, but also about the basics of gardening and food systems: it can teach about how pollen affects the survival of more than just our local native plants, but for our food crops as well.

The interior sensory garden portion of the garden is designed to delight various senses, allowing for a more personal experience. In this part of the garden, primarily the four interior planting boxes and arbor, you are not restricted to just looking: you are invited to feel the texture of diverse plantings, smell their aromas, and listen to the varied materials used for the walking areas and windchimes hanging from the arbor.  For visiting children, the sensory garden is an opportunity to experience the physical and non-virtual world with a number of their senses, encouraging a love of the outside and a break from the constraints of an indoor classroom or an electronic device. Sensory gardens are not only pleasurable. According to Albert Austin, a sensory garden “help[s] children develop important life skills, including emotional regulation and self-reliance" (see: Benefits of a Sensory Garden). Affording children a role in a garden helps this development, and sensory gardens are essential in this. 

The exterior learning space looks to the future: it can be used as an area for any Girl Scout troop to pursue various badges and achievements they are working towards, or for any community member to sit and potentially spend some time learning. The fixed benches create a designated area that mimics a traditional classroom set up.  The same fixed benches can be supplemented by two movable benches that are available for larger groups. The full-time educational aspect of the exterior space is designed to be accessible to all who visit the garden, and is in the form of an informational kiosk, which is placed to the right of the fixed benches. In addition to the materials on the kiosk, there is additional materials on the garden website, Zinsser Educational Garden, which visitor can link to via a QR code on the kiosk.

Step-by-Step

1. I partnered with a Girl Scout troop leader to figure out our plan for the space and research the necessary supplies and plants for the garden, and further discuss the layout of the garden. 

2. I engaged my father to help me demolish the existing garden, removing the old planter boxes, the mulch, and the overgrown weeds and plants. We saved as many healthy plants as possible, transferring them to pots, in an effort to replant them after construction. With the assistance of my little brother, we then leveled the land as much as we could and took down the old deer fence. 

3. We purchased new supplies to build the new boxes. We began with the perimeter boxes, working in a circular fashion around the existing fence posts. As the land was unable to be leveled, we accounted for changes in elevation by creating stepped boxes. We built these while my brother stained and revitalized the original fence posts, and I later stained the new doors in an effort to match them.

4. We then focused on the interior boxes by building portions in our backyard, along with double doors to replace the previous gate-type entry. We leveled the interior boxes and underwent final construction at the site.

5. Once the interior boxes were in, we focused on the materials for the floor that would replace the mulch. For weed prevention, we lined the spaces between boxes with landscape fabric. We then split the walkways into thirds, with gravel, hauled in by bag, in two of the thirds. We decided to line the  final third was with pine bark, also hauled in by bag. Our thought-process was to integrate the different textures into the sound portion of the garden.

6. Soon after most of the gravel was in, we installed the doors and filled the boxes with soil and compost (compost provided by Hudson Compost). Once some of the boxes had soil in them, my mother and I re-planted some of the preserved plants from the demolished garden in an effort to allow them to thrive in what was now a new environment (which they did!). The preserved plants also provided a good understanding of the scope of new plant purchases that would be needed in the now more efficiently used space.

7. We next put up an arbor going over the center of the garden, in the pine bark section.  The arbor will be used to train honeysuckle vines, and serves as an area for hanging wind chimes for the sound portion of the sensory garden. 

8. Once the major construction of the garden was completed, we put up a new deer fence around the perimeter—which was done mostly in the rain. The fencing permitted us to install the newly purchased plants. The Girl Scout troop I partnered with assisted and collaborated with plant selection, as well as with their locations. 

9. We constructed the outside fixed benches at the same time as we put up the new fencing. I collaborated on the design with my mother, who works at Hillside, in an effort to mimic a traditional classroom set-up.

10. We then finished planting and labeling plants, put the ollas into the beds, and put up the informational kiosk. I also created an informational website, Zinsser Educational Garden. 

11. Finishing touches will continue, such as signage, updates to the kiosk, and the addition of new plants in the spring.

Lessons Learned:

Working with Adults. With the help of adults, I was able to more easily and successfully execute my vision, and supplement my original plan for the space. Working with adults on this project introduced a diversity of ideas,  and though some were better than others, the project itself was able to grow through this collaboration. Personally, I found that this collaboration caused me to grow and have a more mature approach regarding my communication skills, especially since everyone has their own schedules, which I had to work around in order to get things accomplished. I also had to adjust my communication skills in an effort to have my vision come across more effectively and efficiently, as they were not consistently appreciated upon initial presentation.

Outcome and Impact:

Accompanying the physical garden is a website, Zinsser Educational Garden, which any member of the community can use in order to educate themselves in an easy to read and comprehensive style, including: why the garden exists; the plants in each section; and how both the pollinator and sensory garden contribute to education and children. We have carefully curated the plants in the garden, which are labeled and listed on the website along with the area in which they're planted, so that members of the Zinsser Community Garden, or any other plant enthusiasts, can find inspiration. The sensory portion of the garden should contribute to the development of children, as it stimulates and encourages them to spend time outside and notice their environment, while also being fun and interactive. Not only does this project allow for more opportunities for communities such as the local Girl Scouts to have a space to learn and grow, both in their own personal lives and in various skills, but it also positively contributes to the aesthetic and impact of the entire Zinsser Community Garden. This is especially so for anyone who uses the playground right beside it.  Whether or not someone decides to sit on the fixed benches and listen to the wind chimes and the birds, or look at the bright colors in the visual section of the garden, they will get some healthy mental and sensory stimulation out of it. In contributing to both the educational aspect and the native plants, this project will, in a progressive but noticeable way, assist to balance and improve the ecosystem in Hastings, one plant at a time.

Output by the Numbers:

1. We created 11 new boxes in the existing 15 x 30 foot plot, which originally had only 3 boxes in poor condition. The new boxes were filled with approximately 68 cubic feet of new soil. 

2. 25.5 cubic feet of pea pebbles (gravel) and 16 cubic feet of pine bark mulch were utilized as ground cover over landscape fabric.

3. We added 82 linear feet of 5-foot tall “Critter Fence” to enclose the garden.

4. We built, from scratch, two fixed benches (12 foot x 14 inches in an L-shape, and 6 foot x 14 inches).  

5. We purchased two additional benches (47 inch wide) to be moveable in the outside classroom area.

6. We researched, selected, and planted about 25 species of plants.

7. We engaged three family members (two adults and one sibling) to complete the building process, two Girl Scout/Brownie Troop leaders to collaborate on the initial planning, and the Zinsser Community Gardens Advisor regarding the floorplan within the 15 x 30 foot plot.