Gardening, a hobby of patience and persistence. I bet you immediately thought of your grandparents/parents. A norm set by society, HHS is stepping out of that by having their own club dedicated to gardening. 

Run by HHS science teacher Ellen Schweiger, students participating meet every Tuesday after school in Schweiger’s classroom to learn about the many ins and outs of gardening. 

“When we first got our garden it was around 2008, so shortly after that was when I started gardening club.” Schweiger said “ We used it for the botany class then after that we started it where if anybody wanted to work in the garden, they could. Not just the students in the botany class.”

Schweiger loves to lead the club with an open mind. She had prior knowledge of gardening and she discloses that it’s a learning process and she’s learned several things while hosting the club over the years. Starting the club wasn’t easy in the sense that her biggest problem was something out of her control.

“Getting students to join the club or finding students who are interested,” Schweiger said, “It’s hard to find students and get them to stay after school for the club.”

Students like Gabriel Bise, a freshman, joined the club to engage in after-school curriculums. He wanted to help interest himself and others in the activity. He himself also sees the dilemma with the attendance of HHS students attending the club.

“If there’s anything hard about participating and getting into the gardening club is the fact that not everyone is there for the right reasons, or at all,” Bise said. 

Though attendance and getting HHS students to join the club is tough, the students who are actively present in the club partake in fun activities that are usually physical and require them to be a team. Zachariah Robinson, a sophomore, loved exactly that about the club.

“The thing I love the most about gardening club is how much we get to work with our hands,” Robinson said, “ A friend of mine asked me to join it and I actually ended up enjoying the club and we recently went out to the gardens and put decomposing pumpkins on them to make a ‘pumpkin grave.’ It was fun!”

Though the club still has the rest of the year, winter is fast approaching and there are select plants you can grow in the winter. To keep the fun rolling Schweiger planned activities for the group to participate in to last out of the winter.