Even though school is out for summer, a group of students is trading screen time for shovels and soil. But they’re much more than a typical gardening club — they’re turning environmental stewardship into real community projects.
According to EVMS science teacher Amy Riddle, the “Green Biz Kidz” is a student-led club focused on hands-on learning, social entrepreneurship, and sustainability. Meeting weekly after school and during lunchtime, the students manage an expansive list of eco-friendly initiatives, from reviving a dormant hoop house to monitoring local river systems.
“During the school year, we meet every Tuesday to talk about sustainability, plant in the hoop house, or make crafts for our projects,” said Laura Scarcella, a seventh-grade science teacher who co-manages the club with Riddle.
The club’s agricultural efforts are centered around a Norwegian-style hoop house on the EVMS campus, which was initially acquired a few years ago before being successfully rehabilitated by the program.
While the club has its hands in a number of projects, its members say they all have one thing in common: “We just love plants.”
Sawyer Coots and Aliza Frith are two of the club’s students who said they love all of the projects they are able to do with the Biz Kidz, but at the end of the day, they are in it for the plants first and foremost.
“I love getting to interact with the plants and watch them grow over time,” Coots said.
For Frith, she said that the club is one of the only ways she is able to learn the way her brain works best: by doing.
“I love hands-on activities,” she said. “That’s the best way I can learn to be honest.”
Coots agreed, adding that “It’s the best way for everybody to learn — everybody in the whole world.”
And the kidz get more than a few opportunities to learn through doing: students grow vegetables and native plants in the hoop house, have set up a water monitoring station at the Carson River, initiated a composting program with their school’s cafeteria, and during the summer months, they are partnering with the new Bub’s Bookstore and Carson City educational nonprofit Hollow Mountain to design and plant a community garden in downtown Carson City.
The kids are currently working on designing the first phase of the gardens: a Pollinator and Butterfly Waystation garden, which will provide the milkweed and nectar plants vital to sustaining the 3,000-mile migration of monarch butterflies. Their design work is being done in conjunction with a Youth Art Design Challenge, which will incorporate a “mini-station” design element into the overall pollinator garden.
However, those are only two of the partnerships the club has cultivated (pun intended): they’ve also been working with the Carson City Parks, Recreation and Open Space Department. According to Riddle, they have been helping to grow and plant native species in an effort to restore habitats along local trails — including their very own adopted “Green Biz Kidz Trail” on which they do monthly trash clean ups.
Waste reduction is another cornerstone of the club’s mission. After successfully composting with cafeteria staff for three years, the Green Biz Kidz are piloting a school-wide composting program.
Using a grant to purchase compost buckets and educational banners, students worked shifts at the club’s compost table during lunch to train other students on what’s compostable, and why it’s important. Then, each Friday, the students delivered their collected compost to the Greenhouse Project behind Carson High School to feed the hardest-working composters of them all: the project’s worm farm!
The Biz Kidz aren’t only associated with EVMS, however; Empire Elementary School has their own green initiatives program, extending stewardship to the youngest gardeners alongside the middle schoolers.
The club is also making waves in citizen science. Bolstered by a $5,000 Rotary grant, the Green Biz Kidz launched “Project Flow” to install continuous water quality data equipment in the local river.
Completely run by the students—who clean the equipment, process raw data, and monitor the systems—the initiative aims to submit the collected information directly to state and federal environmental agencies.
“We put continuous water quality data equipment into the river, and we are the only entity of people collecting continuous water quality data,” Riddle said. They will be sharing the data collected with the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection (NDEP) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to add to their water monitoring databases.
“We want to be stewards of the trails, we want to learn about and take care of our trails and our rivers,” Riddle said when asked why this particular program is important to the club’s mission. “So, we’re collecting our own data, and that’s going to help us learn more about our river and our systems, but there is also need for more data [at the state and federal levels], and so our goal is to be able to take the data we collect and submit it to the EPA database.”
The Green Biz Kidz rely heavily on community support, grants, and fundraising to keep the program operational.
To generate operational funds, the club hosted an Earth Day Trivia Night fundraiser at the Nashville Social Club earlier this spring to raise money for expanding the hoop house, funding field trips, and covering supplies for student-led crafts.
They are currently seeking local sponsors, offering a $500 annual sponsorship for individual garden beds, complete with a personalized plaque.
Long-term, Riddle said the Green Biz Kidz hope to upgrade their infrastructure to produce enough food to supply the school’s culinary arts classes and, eventually, donate fresh produce to vulnerable students in the school’s McKinney-Vento program.
To learn more about the Green Biz Kidz or to support their upcoming projects, community members can contact club organizers through the Carson City School District at ariddle@carson.k12.nv.us.
To learn more about the club’s current community garden project and art design challenge at the new Bub’s Bookstore, located at 110 S. Curry Street, visit hollowmountainworkshops.org/station or email info@hollowmountainworkshops.org
Editor’s note: Carson Now’s co-editor Kelsey Penrose is associated with the nonprofit Hollow Mountain.
