Staunton students create legacy project with Shelbloom community garden

STAUNTON — Reggie Walton will be moving next year and not attending Shelburne Middle School. The…

Staunton students create legacy project with Shelbloom community garden
Shelburne CTE teacher Ryan Blosser helps students, from left, Nate Colavita, Reggie Walton and Hudson Bronik-Ezzell plant collard greens Thursday morning, May 12, in the middle school's garden.

STAUNTON — Reggie Walton will be moving next year and not attending Shelburne Middle School. The seventh-grader is disappointed that they won’t see the end results of the work put into creating a school garden this year, but excited to be part of a legacy that will hopefully live on for many years.

Last spring Shelburne’s CTE teacher Ryan Blosser stood in a grassy area behind the middle school and next to the track talking about his dream to create a garden and learning lab that can be used by all students at the school. Behind-the-scenes work was already well underway in realizing that dream. 

With funding supplied by the Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge and Staunton City Schools, plus a lot of hard work by Blosser and his students, a year later that dream has come true. Last Thursday students were planting kale and collard greens in the production garden.