Printer Friendly Page

YOUNG PEOPLE BUILD WHEELCHAIR GARDENS FOR

VETERANS -- "These gardens will be therapeutic for

the veterans. They will give them a reason to get

outside and do something in the fresh air."

 

 

Here's a great idea you might put to good use to help wheelchair-bound veterans in your community.

Story here... http://www.mlive.com/
news/sanews/index.ssf?/base/news
-23/118086603391390.xml&coll=9

Story below:

-------------------------

Youths build gardens for veterans

MARISA GWIDT
THE SAGINAW NEWS

Gardens are beautiful, but people in wheelchairs usually can do little more than look.

A group of 58 White Pine Middle School students helped make it easier for disabled people to tend gardens at the Lutz Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 1500 Weiss in Saginaw.

Veterans there have fresh flowers and vegetables growing in two new wheelchair-accessible gardens in their front yard after a mid-May planting party that teachers Mary Smith, Janet Lane and Anne Jankens organized.

"These gardens will be therapeutic for the veterans," said Lane, an English and social studies teacher. "They will give them a reason to get outside and do something in the fresh air."

Youths pushed wheelbarrows filled with topsoil, helped build the elevated garden bases, planted crops and flowers, and played games of bingo with the veterans.

Candace Garza, 13 of Saginaw, who helped construct guardrails for the flower garden, said she learned that helping people is fun.

"I liked talking to the vets; they were easy to talk to," she said. "They would tell us a lot of stories about their lives."

Smith received a $2,000 grant from the Saginaw Community Foundation last fall to fund the project.

The math and science teacher said she heard about wheelchair-accessible gardens from a colleague and researched them on the Internet before deciding building a couple would make a good learning tool.

"My hope was that this project would teach our kids that they can work together to make good things happen," she said. "And it did."

Marisa Gwidt is a staff writer. You may reach her at 776-9716.

-------------------------

Larry Scott  --