Submitted by North Thurston Public Schools
North Thurston Public Schools (NTPS) offers a variety of courses in plant and animal science. These high school and middle school classes focus on a variety of topics, including horticulture, botany, agriculture, animal science, land management, and forestry. Experience with plant cultivation and nature preservation gives students critical thinking skills required in the laboratory as well as scientific gardening and job-ready skills such as operation and maintenance of equipment necessary for greenhouse production and preparation of harvested plants.
The district supports faculty who specialize in these areas and the infrastructure to create meaningful lessons, including six greenhouses around the district. The community can support NTPS horticulture programs by visiting one of our schools’ upcoming community plant sales.
North Thurston High School senior Caysie is the manager of the school greenhouse during 5th period. She explains the day’s work as we walk to the greenhouse. She shows off tables full of potted flowers and trays of cucumber, tomato, and zucchini starts they’ll be selling in a few weeks. Today her classmates are working on seeding new pepper starts. Next week the tomato starts will be ready to transplant into larger individual containers and sell. They started the seeds before spring break and Caysie came in to water them.
“This is my favorite class because being around the plants and getting my hands dirty is more relaxing than any other part of the day,” Caysie said. She hopes to have her own homestead one day and become a farm veterinarian. She also is enrolled in teacher Mark Sloan’s Animal Science class and is a member of the Future Farmers of America (FFA) club.
Flowers and Veggie Starts for Sale
Caysie’s friend Amanda (they/them) shows off the large flowerpots ready for sale. They helped seed three different colors of calibrachoa (also called “million bells” or “tiny petunias”) and dozens of creeping Jenny plants weeks ago, then transplanted different varieties into patterns in the pots. These are sure to be a popular item at the school’s Mother’s Day plant sale, along with hanging flower baskets, ready-to-plant flowers, and vegetable starts for summer favorites like cucumbers and zucchini.
NTHS isn’t the only school to run a spring plant sale. The horticulture program at Envision Career Academy specializes in cultivating tulips and garlic, and their spring tulip sales are popular. “I center the program around bulbs because they grow well when the students are here,” explains Kent Johnson, Envision’s agricultural science teacher.
Community Partnerships and CTE Learning
Johnson’s students learn about land management, forestry, food and flower production, and more. While there is some work in the classroom, students in Johnson’s classes spend more time weeding, planting, tending, and moving soil. Three times per year, they partner with Lacey Parks to remove invasive ivy around Lake Lois. Johnson is working on other possible community partnerships focused on community food cultivation. This will help students connect to the community and encounter more examples of people working in the greater food system. Johnson invites speakers from entities like the Department of Natural Resources so students can see how the skills they’re learning in his class can connect to opportunities in careers such as forestry analysis or field firefighting.
Studying Horticulture in Middle School
Horticulture studies are now available at Salish Middle School, where Brock McCall began working with students on plant cultivation in fall 2023. Salish is fortunate to have a nearby Amazon Fulfillment Center as a Partner in Education, and they’ve donated materials that have helped the horticulture program grow. McCall knows that some of his students do well with construction projects, so on the day of our visit, he tasks those students with assembling the sides of some recently donated metal beds and filling them with soil. Other students are in the greenhouse filling seed trays with soil, planting kale and chives, and carefully watering the trays so the soil and seeds don’t wash away.
McCall looks forward to a time when Salish is home to a community garden that students, staff, and neighbors can enjoy together. “I want someone to feel like they can take a tomato if they see it’s ripe,” he said.
McCall invites relevant guest speakers to class and plans career-inspired field trips. They’ll welcome a flower designer to class this spring and will visit Silver Spring Organics soon after. At this commercial composting facility, students will dispose of waste collected after a salmon dissection in another science class. They’ll also get to hear professionals in the organic waste industry talk about their careers.
NTPS is proud to inspire future farmers and caretakers of our natural world with career and technical education (CTE) classes in horticulture!
Upcoming Plant Sales at North Thurston Public Schools
- The North Thurston High School plant sale will take place May 8 –11 and May 15 –18. Weekday sales are 12:20 p.m. – 5 p.m. and Saturday sales are 9 a.m. –1 p.m. Plant sale proceeds support the North Thurston High School FFA chapter.
- River Ridge High School will hold its annual plant sale from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. on May 11. The sale will include dahlia starts, a variety of vegetables, houseplants, spring flowers, bouquets and more.
- The Timberline High School plant sale takes place from noon–3:00 pm on May 30 and 31, and from 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. on June 1 at the Timberline High School Land Lab behind Horizons Elementary School.
- The community can purchase tulips in a variety of colors from Envision Career Academy between 12:50 p.m. and 1:40 p.m. on Fridays in the spring. Proceeds support the school horticulture program.
Sponsored
