By: Shyanne Gaston
One of the newest clubs at Hershey High School has students working together and giving back to their community.
Garden Club was developed during the end of the 2015 school year. Senior, Daniel Ioffreda, is the President and Founder of Garden Club. Mrs. White, a Family Consumer Science teacher at Hershey High School, is the supervisor. The Garden is located behind the Large Group Instruction.
plant watermelon after school. Issacson is running for next year’s Garden Club President.
Garden Club consists of girls and boys in grades nine through twelve. The overwhelming participation in Garden Club lead to Ioffreda administering leadership roles to make the club run smoothly. An election is being held to decide the 2016-2017 school year President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary.
These leadership roles will keep Ioffreda’s purpose of the Garden Club alive while him and many other participants graduate.
The establishment of Garden Club came about through Ioffreda’s experience gardening with his father at the Hershey Community Garden at the Medical Center.
“I was helping him with his plot when I thought this would be a really cool project to start at the school,” said Ioffreda.
He soon realized that his experience and passion for gardening is shared by many other students as well. Caroline Cotton is a senior at Hershey High School and is an avid member of Garden Club. Similar to Ioffreda’s story, Cotton tends to her own crop farm with her family.
“Through Garden Club I’m hoping that students have a better appreciation of what farmers have to do on a larger scale,” said Cotton.
On Cotton’s farm she grows corn, soybeans, alfalfa, orchard grass, rye, and oats on a bigger plantation. Although Garden Club is a smaller area, the club grows a lot of fruits and vegetables like strawberries, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and corn.
After the food is grown, the short term goal is to donate all the food to different organizations like Gemma’s Angels. The long term goal for the club is to incorporate the fruits and vegetables into school lunches and integrate the garden into school curriculum in some format.
The Garden club has made great strides in their first year and plan to have more success as the years go on.
