Countryside Elementary School Garden

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Byron Center, MI
Countryside Elementary School Garden

Our garden gives K-4 students hands-on opportunities to grow food and learn together all year long.

04/29/2026

Another rainy Wednesday for the horticulturist group. Thankful for the pavilion so we can still able to get our hands dirty while we stay dry.

Third graders planted herbs in pots and used our sense of taste, smell and feel to do some herb identification.

The fourth graders were able to propagate some indoor pots as well as planned their 12 x 12 gardens.

And look at our new radish babies🫜🫜🫜🫜

04/23/2026

Nothing better than sunshine, kindergartners and WORMS! Had a lot of fun learning about our worms the super hero’s of the garden. Than we explored the garden through a living and non-living scavenger hunt.

04/15/2026

Rainy week one of horticulture group, we took advantage of the rainy weather to revive our new worms and repot our tomatoes starters. The kids loves getting their hands dirty. Next week we plant!

11/19/2025

The end of another growing season: the Countryside Elementary School Garden has been put to bed for the winter. Thank you to all of our neighbors who donated leaves this fall.

What are all those leaves doing in the garden, anyway? Leaves are gold for our garden. They provide organic matter to worms and other tiny creatures, breaking down leaves to feed our hard-working soil with fresh nutrients. Leaves also provide insulation for those tiny creatures and insects and a place to hide or hole up for the winter. And leaves provide a buffer for our perennial plants, making it just a little easier to survive the winter and thrive come spring.

One last thought before we snooze the winter away: as you get ready for Thanksgiving, it's fun to think about why we might choose some of those more traditional turkey day foods. We found celery and sage still booming in the garden, and things like carrots, potatoes, and squash were very recently harvested. At least here in Michigan, a lot of what ends up on our plates is food that's in season, meaning it was very recently still growing in our gardens!

10/25/2025

Yesterday was our last meeting of our Fall 2025 class of Horticulturist Teams! It felt strange tearing out tomatoes, tomatillos, and other cold-sensitive crops, but waking up to frost this morning reminded us all that we are well into fall here in West Michigan. And... It was definitely time to start putting the garden to bed for the winter.

These kids have been a wonderful asset to the garden this fall and really a joy to welcome each week. They've been curious, insightful, thoughtful, and always ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work. They've tended and cared for their school garden for the benefit of all students. Well done, teams!

(We also found the garden's largest tomato hornworm we've ever seen!).

10/18/2025

With this warm fall and only one hint of morning frost so far, the garden is still overachieving like crazy. Each week it seems like we should be cutting back for winter... And each week, we can't bring ourselves to stop this good thing we've got going.

So... More growing! More harvesting! Today we picked green onions, so many tomatoes, a second raspberry harvest, tomatillos, cucamelons, and a few stray red potatoes.

We also had two surprises today: a praying mantis that camouflaged so well only one of our most observant students saw it in the raspberries and... the bones of a rabbit, which launched some interesting conversations and wonderings about what might have happened. Never a dull moment and always something to think about at the learning garden.

10/10/2025

Fall in the garden: a time of worlds colliding, sometimes day by day, with our first frost yesterday morning and cool, sunshine filled afternoons.

We've got one foot still firmly in summer, harvesting tomatoes, tomatillos, and cucamelons.

The other foot, though? It's looking forward to putting the garden to bed for the winter, prepping our garden space and soil so it's ready to rest and grow again in the spring. Today that meant cutting our mint back, cutting down the last of our sunflowers, and... Painting rocks for other kids to find!

10/03/2025

It was pumpkin day in the garden! Our Horticulturist Teams got to bring home a pumpkin of their choice from our "pumpkin patch" scavenger hunt, then we talked about a pumpkin life cycle, how seeds have everything they need to grow into a new plant given the right resources, and built our own seed viewer experiments to see how long it takes for them to sprout.

It might not feel like fall out there, but it was nice to dig our hands into a pumpkin and learn more about how they grow. Kudos to Peter, who shared exactly what pollination is, and parents, see if your students remember what "germination" is (a fancy word for a seed sprouting).

09/26/2025

Our Horticulturist Team kids learned all about SEEDS today: planting them, harvesting them, and gifting them to others to plant next spring.

Our third grade teams decorated envelopes and harvested sunflower seeds - along with very special guest Ms. Viveen! Did you know each flower can produce hundreds of seeds? Each year we practice being proactive and beginning with the end in mind by collecting those seeds for next year's sunflower patch.

Then our fourth graders had a very special guest: the king of the garden, a praying mantis. These insects are great at snacking on other bugs, many of which can be pests in the garden. Then we talked about succession planting and what plants we can still grow from seed this fall: carrots, radishes, and a new-to-us plant called orach went into the bed where our potatoes were harvested last week.

And let's take just another moment to appreciate our gorgeous new fence! It really is a spectacular upgrade.

09/25/2025

Our fall Horticulturist Team mascot found its wings yesterday!

We found this caterpillar the very first day of our team meetings this fall, the next day it turned into a chrysalis, and Tuesday night... It emerged, a beautiful butterfly ready to make its long journey to Mexico for the winter.

What a beaut! More photos in the comments. 🦋🦋🦋

Address

8200 Eastern Avenue SE
Byron Center, MI
49315

Website

https://www.bcpsk12.net/countryside/

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