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SNN: Sparta Garden Towers

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Students in Sparta are getting green thumbs and growing their knowledge with the help of towering gardens. School News Network takes us inside the classroom for a closer look.

Educators at Appleview Elementary are teaching students about healthy lifestyles with help from indoor tower gardens that can be moved from classroom to classroom. 

Teachers received a grant from the Sparta Education Foundation to bring growing towers to the school. The tower gardens are aeroponic — which means they use air or mist instead of soil. That allows vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers to grow in relatively small spaces. Tower gardens can host more than one hundred fifty different plants but the school started with 28 vegetables, including edible greens and herbs.

Students learn what plants need to live, and what it means to eat healthy. The mobile gardens move around the school to allow different lessons for different grade levels. Some students plant seeds while others track growth and chart data.

Teachers use them in curriculum calling for healthy lifestyles and to teach specialty science lessons. They also hope to offer events to demonstrate how easy it is to grow healthy food and to expand the project to other schools and the community.

Joy Walczak reporting for school news network

Patrick joined WGVU Public Media in December, 2008 after eight years of investigative reporting at Grand Rapids' WOOD-TV8 and three years at WYTV News Channel 33 in Youngstown, Ohio. As News and Public Affairs Director, Patrick manages our daily radio news operation and public interest television programming. An award-winning reporter, Patrick has won multiple Michigan Associated Press Best Reporter/Anchor awards and is a three-time Academy of Television Arts & Sciences EMMY Award winner with 14 nominations.
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