As a high school student, you don’t always get the chance to go outside and hang out with your friends due to the amount of work that needs to be done in your classes. If you’re lucky, your teacher may take you outside to do your work, but typically the work needs to be done inside of the classroom.

Quinn Swope, 12, saw this as a perfect opportunity to create an after-school organization centered around being outside and helping the Eureka community. This led to the establishment of the EHS Gardening Club.

Since Swope needed some assistance starting the club, they gathered several friends to help them along the way. Carly Michaels, 12, and Nadia Clark, 12, are just two students who have also helped fellow members realize that it doesn’t take much effort to have fun outside while helping the environment at the same time.

“You don’t have to know a lot about gardening to enjoy being out there,” Swope said. “The majority of the people out there didn’t know anything about gardening. Me, Carly, and Nadia were the three who really knew the most stuff about gardening, and from there, it was just people who wanted to hang out with their friends and have the opportunity to be outside. It also teaches you to appreciate what’s around you more. On the sides of roads, you see native plants and things that would have been growing over where highways are, but instead, roads were paved there. It really helps you come into contact with those plants, rather than just seeing it as listening to music with a plant outside your window.”

Meetings take place in language arts teacher Tom Broekelmann’s room right after school every other Wednesday, giving students the time to make new friends and learn more about the Earth.

“Gardening club is open to everybody even if you’ve never touched a plant in your life,” Michaels said. “We have a very friendly and welcoming environment, so you’re bound to find some people who you’re going to become friends with. Plus, we do a pretty decent amount of outside work, so if you enjoy the outdoors it’s a great opportunity for you to get out and help the environment.”

Despite the overall positive experience of the gardening club, it hasn’t always been an easy journey to get those results.

“It’s difficult to find the activities to do, because even though you have all these people, what exactly are we going to get involved in?” Swope said. “Last year, we didn’t really have a main project until the gardening boxes outside of the stem wing were built, and since no one used them we decided that those were ours.”

Even though Swope has spent countless hours on the clubs management due to being a single leader, their hard work will leave EHS better
and brighter than it was when they first entered as a freshman.

“My entire life has been dedicated to working with nature and the environment or conservation, and that’s what I want to do for the rest of my life,” Michaels said. “It’s a way for me to bring such an important aspect of my life to the school and also help our local ecosystems in the process.”

With Earth Day coming up on April 22, the club plans to continue their prairie outside of the stem wing and help support the Earth in everything they do.

“Earth Day is super important be-
cause we’re celebrating that we have

a very special planet and nothing can sustain us like our Earth can,” Clark said. “It’s really important that we get to be here and enjoy it, but we need to be able to take care of it properly in order for future generations to also get that joy out of it.”

If you are interested in helping make Eureka a better place through the growth of nature, all members of the club would be more than happy to have new peers join. Not only could it benefit the planet, but it could help you discover that there is more to our world than meets the eye.

“Be kind to yourself, and be kind to the Earth,” Clark said.