Fairfield school among first in the nation to receive Shipt and Target Garden Grant

FAIRFIELD, Ala. (WBRC) - A Fairfield elementary school is growing more than vegetables this year. Glen Oaks Intermediate School is one of the first schools in the country selected to receive a Shipt and Target Garden Grant, and the money is going straight into a garden students already use as an outdoor classroom.

Glen Oaks was awarded $6,000 as part of the grant’s “Garden Expansion” category, one of 13 Birmingham-area recipients in this year’s first cohort. The Garden Grant program is a joint initiative from Shipt and Target designed to support new gardens, garden expansions and garden restorations in metro areas across the country.

“We found out this summer that we received the grant, and we were so excited to hear that we were one of the first cohorts, actually, along with some of the other schools in the surrounding area, to have received this grant,” said Dr. Nikia Holston, principal at Glen Oaks Intermediate.

Holston said the school has run a community school garden for years, and the grant will help pay for tools and supplies the garden needed.

“We’re getting ready, of course, to use this grant to continue to enhance what we already have in our garden,” Holston said. “We needed a lot of new tools and supplies for our garden, and so the Target and Shipt grant is going to do just that for us.”

Third, fourth and fifth graders at Glen Oaks get hands-on experience in the garden throughout the school year, growing tomatoes, cabbage and greens. The school partners with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System at Auburn University, which sends volunteers to lead activities with students.

“Our students are able to participate in activities,” Holston said. “They’ve grown tomatoes, they’ve grown cabbage, they’ve grown greens. And so it just really gives them an opportunity to just do a lot of hands-on with the garden.”

Holston said students follow the entire growing process, from planting seeds in the fall to watching them grow through the spring.

“So they’re taking our students step by step through the process of what it looks like to plant seeds and how they grow through the process of growing,” Holston said.

Beyond the growing itself, Holston said the garden connects to what students are already learning in the classroom.

“It’s just been a great opportunity for them — learning, nutritional learning, science, a lot of those experiences for our students,” Holston said.

School leaders say the garden is about more than a single school year. A Fairfield City Schools representative said the garden teaches life skills students can carry with them well beyond Glen Oaks, calling it a way for students to eventually give back to their own communities and pointing to the district’s broader focus on career-connected learning as part of educating “the whole child.”

Holston echoed that the lessons are meant to stick.

“With all of the experiences that our students are getting, it teaches them life skills — things that they can use,” Holston said. “The farm-to-table experience is definitely something that we want to use our garden to highlight for our students here.”

She added that students take those lessons with them as they move on from Glen Oaks.

“Our intermediate school, when they leave here and go to the middle school, they’re taking those skills with them,” Holston said. “And even through high school, when they get older, they’re taking those skills with them as well.”

Representatives with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, who help run hands-on activities at the Glen Oaks garden, said they’re hoping to recruit more volunteers to support this garden and other school gardens across the Birmingham area. One extension agent pointed to food insecurity in Jefferson County as a reason access to gardens and fresh produce matters for students, though cited figures for food insecurity rates vary by source, ranging from roughly one in four to one in six residents depending on the data set.

Anyone interested in volunteering with a school or community garden can contact their local extension office or visit aces.edu to find opportunities in their county.

Glen Oaks was one of 13 organizations in the Birmingham metro selected for this year’s Shipt and Target Garden Grant. Recipients include:

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