KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Volunteers armed with shovels and rakes are weeding, pruning and harvesting at Fulton High School in North Knoxville. Students head back to class soon and the school's garden needs a little sprucing up.
A teacher made a post on Facebook, calling for volunteers, and the community is showing up to help.
"This is Knoxville's best-kept secret,” math teacher Karen Wilkinson explained.
Wilkinson started the garden 12 years ago on a patch of grass.
“Year after year after year, I just kept planting more stuff, getting rid of more grass and just planting more and more stuff,” she said. “The bigger it got, the more I just wanted to keep going and the more I just wanted to get rid of the grass.”
The garden has expanded across the campus, blooming with colorful flowers and countless fruits.
“We had green beans, cucumbers, blackberries, we've had some squash, peaches and soon we'll have some apples,” art teacher Caitlin Seidler said. “This school is more than just a school. It's a community hub and contributing to the surroundings is just a way to connect with the community, working with other people here. I meet people or I get to know students in a different way if I'm working alongside them. So it's just a way to build relationships and take pride in our school environment.”
Normally, Wilkinson said teachers and students work in the garden alongside her. Now that school’s out for summer, she needed more help, so Wilkinson posted on Facebook asking for volunteers.
“I didn't even know this existed. It's five minutes from my house,” neighbor and landscape designer Rachiel Soto said. “It’s just, I have no words with, like, how amazing this is.”
Soto saw the social media post and came to lend a hand, along with others like fellow neighbor Sonja Koeckeritz.
“I think that it is incredibly important that even people who don't have children support the children of our community,” Koeckeritz said. “This is my neighborhood. This is where I chose to live. I love it here in Knoxville and specifically in Old North Knoxville. And I think it's really important to make sure that our schools are well rounded, have great programs like this where you have this beautiful garden. And I think that it's really important and I will always be a supporter of public schools.”
Wilkinson said she’s had 12 people come out to help.
“Half the people were complete strangers that I didn't even know,” she said. “And I'm just, I'm blown away that there's people that I actually like to move mulch, which is backbreaking work. And I'm just blown away by it all.”
Typically, Wilkinson said she spends at least 20 hours a week in the garden.
“It's amazing how much time goes into a garden,” Koeckeritz observed. “I think sometimes we figure, oh, that must be so easy. It's just, you know, some wildflowers. The amount of time that people put in, Karen has put an amazing amount of time into this process, which I didn't realize how big of a garden it is here at Fulton.”
When asked if the extra hours are worth it, Wilkinson responded with an emphatic “yes.”
“I love teaching math more than anything. I love working math problems,” Wilkinson elaborated. “But I love having this garden and having kids that work in the garden. Brings me so much joy when kids work in the garden. That brings me a lot of joy.”
All the fruits and veggies are harvested and given out to volunteers during the summer or students during the school year. In addition to the produce, Wilkinson said there are over 30 native plant species.
“Another big reason that I've wanted to beautify this campus is just because a lot of our kids live in apartments or they rent houses where they can't do gardens,” Wilkinson explained. “And so I wanted to give them a beautiful place when they come to school that they have never ever seen before that they just don't have in their environments. And so that's been a really big reason why.”
Wilkinson says the garden operates entirely off of grants, donations and her own money.
When it comes to the future of the garden, she's hoping to turn the space into a certified arboretum and botanical garden.
“I don't know what that involves since this is a public school, but I would love to make this an official on-the-map botanical garden,” Wilkinson said.
Although Wilkinson says she’s close to retiring, the newfound help this summer is giving her hope for the garden’s future.
“I just feel real hopeful now going forward, like when I am 70 and 80, that I'll still be able to get help here because of Facebook basically,” Wilkinson said. “I'm not going anywhere. I plan to keep working in this garden as long as I physically can, which I believe I will be able to do until I die because motion is lotion.”
