Project name: Sense-sational Gardening for Kids
County: Ransom
Project Coordinator: Angie Waletzko
Lead Organization: NDSU Extension – Ransom County
Address: PO Box 950
Lisbon, ND 58054
Telephone: 701.683.3127Email:
Location of Garden: Container gardens will be located at individual homes in Lisbon and the surrounding area and one in Fargo
- Briefly describe your garden project including its major goals. Please include a description of activities. (150 words or less)
Our one-day workshop will specifically reach out to children of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds. We will focus on sensory gardening and its remarkable benefits. Our goal is to make gardening a more accessible, enjoyable, and memorable experience for all children. We will engage our participants in activities like Spin-a-Smell or Name-that-Sound that captivate their attention while teaching how gardening can be therapeutic and hands-on. We will focus on our five senses in our nature activities, allowing time to play in our garden sensory bin, and finish our day by each child planting a take-home container garden incorporating one of the five senses with themes like Sound Garden, Scratch and Sniff, Taste Test, Gentle Touch, and Pop of Color.
- How will your project make a difference to itschildren? (150 words or less)
Our children will be encouraged to look, touch, feel, smell, and taste plants. We want them to explore, get dirty, and try new things. We hope to teach our kids that there is no right or wrong way to garden as long as you have fun and learn. We hope to explore the merits of using sensory gardens to calm our anxieties and reduce stress in our kids’ everyday lives. Kids will go home from this workshop with their own personal container garden they can look at, touch, feel, smell, or taste all summer. The garden will teach them responsibility in caring for plants by watering and sheltering it from extreme weather. Their garden will also be a tool for them to utilize with one of their five senses when they are feeling stressed or anxious. Having a tool like a sensory garden will help bring peace to our children.
- How will your project make a difference in your community? (150 words or less)
Imagine kids in small town North Dakota spending the day creating sensory gardens that are not only beautiful, but therapeutic as well. The community will benefit from these kids’ experiences because these kids will be nurturing an outlet, a safe place to let go of their stress. Neighbors and friends will be introduced to gardening just by these kiddos showing them their sensory gardens. Those in the community might be influenced to try gardening as well or try a plant they never thought of before. The sensory gardens around our community will act as a hub for parents to talk to their kids as they are taking care of their plants.
Two container gardens will be donated to Gigi’s Playhouse Down Syndrome Achievement Center in Fargo and the South Valley Special Education Summer School Program held at the Lisbon Elementary School. These will provide a tool for an engaging curriculum.
- Please estimate the number of participants directly involved in the project:
Young children (3–12 years old): 15
Teens (13–17 years old): 3
Adults: 8
- Briefly list any partners (such as 4-H, FFA, school, church, garden center, parks department) that are involved.Briefly describe their roles in the project.Be very brief.
- Ransom County Extension as workshop location and registration
- Area greenhouses (Sheyenne Greenhouse and Harmsen’s) for plants
- Lisbon True Value Hardware for pots, fertilizer, and soil.
- Budget
Expenditures Amount
Plants (100@ $3)$300
Soil (32 bags at $6)192
Pots (20 @ $8)160
Fertilizer (Osmocote) 12
Food items to be used in Spin-a-Smell Game = 10
TOTAL $674
For projects coordinated by organizationsoutside of NDSU Extension
(to be completed by local NDSU educator)
Please describe your Extension office’s involvement in this garden program (recruiting youth, teaching, coordinating volunteers, providing meeting space). (150 words or less)
The Ransom County Extension Office will do the promotion for this event through our website, facebook page and newletters. We will provide the meeting space to hold the session and assist Angie in any way that we can with teaching or helping with assembling planters.
I support this project and will work with the coordinator to ensure a positive educational experience for the youth.
Deb Lee March 5, 2018
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Name of NDSU Extension Service staff Date