Good Shepherd, Rocky Mount, Grows Day School Garden

Lots of things grow at the Good Shepherd Day School in Rocky Mount: imagination, knowledge, children, love and even radishes. The Day School, which has stayed open throughout the pandemic, has planted a garden for which the children and staff have lovingly tended and cared.

One of the first crops that the children have been able to harvest are radishes. According to Katharina Johnson, interim Day School director, the radishes were a good choice with which to start. The seeds are a good size for small hands to handle, they grow fairly quickly, and they can be harvested in a short period of time.

“The dirt thing, the working in the soil and learning that they can grow something, is really grounding,” said Johnson. When health department rules banned playing in sand, Johnson decided that the experience of digging and even creating was important, so she moved those efforts to soil and gardening. Gardening can also teach creation care, stewardship of the earth and play an important part in fun environmental learning.

The surprise and joy that come from pulling the radish up out of the soil is a good and wondrous thing.

By Leah Dail, diocesan assistant youth missioner