New Haven Independent

Mayor John DeStefano walked down the red carpet laid down at the entrance to the garden and joked to the students on either side, “It feels like my prom.”

As emcee of the festivities, the first thing he said was, “Well, of course we’re in Hamden. And it’s a special part of Hamden that New Haven cares a great deal about. For more than a century this has been a wonderful corner of our park system.”

The $3.5 million renovation project was unique for the Citywide School Construction Program. More than three-quarters of the funding came from the state, while $800,000 came from city coffers.

Charles “Chaz” Mavrelion (pictured on the far right at the ribbon cutting) works with the 45 New Haven students who have chosen to participate in the agriculture program. They work in the garden during the summer and have classes in the late afternoon three days a week. “Being on Long Island Sound, there was not much room for agriculture or horticulture,” he says, so the school developed a partnership with the Rose Garden about eight years ago. The kids also grow the flowers that beautify streetscapes all over the city, and they’re currently cultivating hundreds of poinsettia plants whose sale at the holidays will support Sound School programs. Click here to download an order form.

State Rep. Toni Walker (pictured) spoke, saying she was happy to be part of an event that wasn’t about juvenile criminal justice, her signature issue. And she knows her flowers, naming several varieties that she spied as she walked in the garden, which isn’t just about roses, as its name implies.

And although June is really the peak month for roses, this lovely specimen was on display in late September.

Walker said her own garden is her “peace.” And she urged the students to take advantage of the wonderful opportunity the Sound’s agriculture program provides, to be “out in the sun, digging in the dirt.” Click here for her comments.

City and school officials decided to renovate the Pardee Greenhouse so the agricultural program at the Sound School could expand its curriculum to allow for the full flowering of the study of agricultural sciences. Students will produce 42,000 plants for the city in the spring planting alone, according to the handout at the dedication.

Sound School Principal Steve Pynn (pictured) said, “I think it’s absolutely safe to say there isn’t a[nother] high school in America that has a facility like this.” He said he appreciated working in a city and school district where officials were open to “outrageous ideas” like creating a garden and greenhouse space for use by urban school students, and that the realization of such ideas is what is needed for 21st century education.

So, why is the program open only to New Haven students at the Sound School? Pynn explained that every board of education in the state is required to designate a regional vo-ag center where its students can choose to go. Many of the students who attend Sound live in towns that would be served by the vo-ag program in Wallingford. But he said New Haven created its own program in order to offer both aquaculture and agriculture. However, space limitations - and the availability of vo-ag programs in other towns - means that the school limits participation to students from New Haven - even though the Pardee Rose Garden and Greenhouse are in Hamden.

Not all the 45 students in the program plan to pursue agriculture or horticulture as a career. But some do.

One girl said she’d like to be a florist. Junior Carrie Ewing (pictured above making floral centerpieces) said she’d like to be a plant scientist. She says as far as she knows she’s never been to the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station a couple of miles away on Huntington Street. But that seems like a logical place for a field trip for these students who like “digging in the dirt.”