Intergenerational gardening program springs to life in Lexington

Lexington’s new gardening program for seniors and summer camp kids has created fertile ground for strengthening intergenerational learning, collaboration between town departments, and multicultural bonds in the community.

Over the summer, the town launched Sow and Grow Together, a program bringing together seniors and kids from the town’s summer camp program to help plan and design a community garden. Lexington Recreation and Community Programs, working with the Human Services Department, created the program with a $17,500 grant from the National Recreation and Park Association and the RRF Foundation for Aging. Lexington was one of four communities nationwide to receive the grant.

Lexington officials said they envisioned the five-week program as a way to strengthen relationships between younger and older residents, give seniors a chance to share their gardening knowledge and life wisdom with a new generation, and cultivate a wider interest in gardening and a sense of environmental stewardship.

“I grew up on a farm, so it’s important to me, but I feel like so many of our youth don’t have that opportunity to see where their food comes from, to see all the different intrinsic benefits of growing your own food and caring for and being a steward of that,” said Community Center Director Christine Dean, whose office overlooks the garden. “And I think there’s so much to learn from our older adults.”

Following a kickoff party on June 25, the children, ages 7 to 11, spent the five weeks keeping journals, matching plants to different shades on a color wheel, learning about plant components, participating in a scavenger hunt, creating artwork, and painting rocks for a rock garden. Volunteer senior gardeners explained concepts such as pruning and checking for insects, evaluating soil composition, understanding plant varieties, and appreciating the role of worms, officials said.

“Some of the seniors felt that it was great to share what they know about gardening with the younger generation,” said Michelle Kelleher, Lexington’s senior services director. “Their youth and energy was contagious. The presence of having them there brought liveliness and joy to the seniors. I feel the elders feel more valued and socially engaged when we run programs like these.”

Lexington officials also wanted the program to reflect Lexington’s large Asian population, Dean said. A leader from the regional Chinese Garden Club participated in the program, and as a result, some campers were better able to understand gardening terms in Mandarin or basic Chinese.

The program also welcomed campers with disabilities.

“With some of the activities,” Dean said, “we were able to reach them in a different way, which was also just super rewarding — kids who maybe didn’t have an interest in certain things, but just loved watering plants, or just got excited to see if the strawberry was ever going to grow. So it was a lot of fun.”

Dean said the seniors and the children grew a wide variety of plants, including vegetables, herbs and marigolds. She said she has been exploring the idea of having an instructor give a cooking demonstration with vegetables grown in the garden.

Dean said the National Recreation and Park Association worked closely with the town, providing training, preparing pre-program surveys, gathering participant feedback from each session, and conducting post-program surveys to measure outcomes.

Dean said the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and she’s looking forward to incorporating the lessons of this summer into future plans. The program will be highlighted at the 10th birthday celebration for the town’s intergenerational community center on Sept. 12, and the town is considering installing a permanent story walk at the center to promote intergenerational connections.