Math Teacher Launches Garden Club with Lowe's Donation

What do a math teacher and Lowes have in common? A desire to teach students where their produce comes from and how to grow it. Through the Lowes’ Heroes Project, Math Teacher Debra Barone was able to secure a generous donation of gardening supplies in a farm-to-table initiative at her school.

Barone teaches at Jefferson Middle School’s in-district site located within the Oregon Middle School in the Patchogue-Medford UFSD. Both Jefferson and its in-district site provide services to students with special education needs and are part of Eastern Suffolk BOCES.

Barone taught at Jefferson before transferring to Oregon this school year. She brought her indoor plants to her new classroom and noticed how her students gravitated toward them. “The kids love it,” she said. “They want to help take care of them, they nurture and water them.”

Barone, who describes herself as an avid gardener, has been searching for ways to bring gardening into the classroom and have students learn how to grow and harvest their own food.

Barone connected with Monica Welter, manager at the East Patchogue-based Lowe’s, and they turned this idea into a reality with a generous Heroes Project donation of indoor growing kits, topsoil, a wheelbarrow, raised beds, hand tools, garden gloves, and more.

The Heroes Project is a company-wide Lowe’s program that connects stores to their local communities through projects that make positive impacts.

This winter Barone plans to start seedlings indoors and move them outside into raised beds come spring. “I think this is a skill everyone should learn and I see how interested my students are in it,” she said. “I am so excited that they are going to grow things they can eat.”