Diego Santos, left, 7, and Enrique Verduzco, 7, students from Debbie Gwynn’s second grade class at Sam Case Primary, harvest beets at the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse Garden on Tuesday with the help of master gardener Carla Johnsen. Lincoln County Master Gardeners helped students from Yaquina View Elementary plant the garden last spring and donated the vegetables to Lincoln County Food Share, the Newport Senior Activity Center and Stone Soup Kitchen. (Photo by Monique Cohen)

Herbs, celery, beets and potatoes were among the produce harvested from the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse garden Tuesday afternoon. The helping hands of 28 students from teacher Debbie Gwynn’s second grade class at Sam Case Primary in Newport harvested vegetables that were planted last spring.

Five of the students involved with Tuesday’s harvest were in Gwynn’s combined first and second grade class last year at Yaquina View Elementary School when they planted the garden. Food harvested from the garden will be donated to Lincoln County Food Share.

Gwynn hopes to continue the project at Sam Case Primary after the school district closed Yaquina View Elementary last summer and is in the planning stages of moving the portable greenhouse they used to grow starts for the garden.

The garden project begins in the classroom as part of the science curriculum, where students learn about plants by growing beans. One year, they grew sunflowers from seed.

“I read to them prior to this a story called “Tops and Bottoms,” and that’s why we were talking about, well is it under the ground like a root or is it the top like the lettuce you get to eat,” Gwynn said. “So I tie in literature, as well.”

On Wednesday, students will write about their harvest experience. This is another way Gwynn incorporates the garden project into their classroom curriculum.

A few students found strategically placed pumpkins in the garden, which she will turn into globes when they get back to the classroom. By drawing the continents on the pumpkins, Gwynn will incorporate the pumpkins in a social studies lesson.

She also hopes to impart a health and nutrition lesson through the garden project, so children can learn to make good food choices.

“I love it. It’s one of the neatest things, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” Gwynn said. “It’s fun to see their excitement with everything.”

Lincoln County Master Gardeners help students with the planting and harvesting of the garden, as well as tending to the greenhouse.

Master gardeners and lighthouse volunteers harvest the garden’s bounty during the summer season and this year donated to Stone Soup Kitchen and the Newport Senior Activity Center.

“We try to keep it all natural. We don’t spray. We’ve tried to introduce some more heirlooms,” said master gardener Liz Olsen, who has been a volunteer with the project since 2005. “We have heirloom lettuce in there, and we had scarlet runner beans that were heirloom that came from Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s estate in Virginia.”

The Yaquina Bay Lighthouse Garden originated in 1994 because of the interest of eighth-grade student Andy Hall, who visited the lighthouse with his parents and sister the previous year during Christmas.

“His Christmas wish was to have some sort of a project at the lighthouse,” said Mike Rivers with Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, who played Santa Claus at the lighthouse.

Hall, his family and Rivers planted a small garden filled with beets, chard, lettuce and potatoes. Hall tended to the garden for the next couple of years. Then at around age 19, he returned with a contractors license and bid to build a retaining wall around the land where the garden sits. With the help of grants, community partners and Friends of Yaquina Lighthouses, they were able to get seeds, gardening tools for small hands, the greenhouse at Yaquina View Elementary and gardening literature to educate students.



Monique Cohen is a reporter with the News-Times. Contact her at 265-8571 ext. 217 or mcohen@newportnewstimes.com.



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