David Mekeel: Gov. Mifflin students plant victory garden at The John Updike Childhood Home

May 31—Using their hands as tiny shovels, a group of kids formed small holes in the loose soil.

They carefully removed an assortment of young plants from their plastic containers and placed them inside, covering up their roots with dirt before gently sprinkling them water. With proper care the plants will hopefully soon begin to grow.

With the right mix of sun and water, they will eventually create a bounty of tomatoes and peppers and lettuce — just like gardens that sat on the same spot in the 1930s and 1940s did.

And that's the whole point.

The kids, about 45 fifth graders from Gov. Mifflin Intermediate School, were creating a victory garden at The John Updike Childhood Home in Shillington. Victory gardens were planted during World War II to help overcome food shortages caused by the war effort.

The project is a joint effort between the Updike Home and the school district, offering kids a chance to learn some unique lessons and the historic site a chance to reclaim part of its past.

The effort was led by teacher Damien Drago, who said he was approached by district officials about recreating the garden that Updike's family created in their backyard when he was a child. The Updikes grew an assortment of produce and sold it at a stand near their home at 117 Philadelphia Ave.

Drago was an obvious choice for the project, having a love for both gardening and history.

He enlisted his fifth grade class as well as a second class to help with the effort. The students helped build the four raised garden beds — each 32 square feet — and fill them with soil. And last week they planted 46 plants in that soil.

Drago said the project is presenting a lot of learning opportunities for the students. They've used their math skills to figure out how much soil they needed to buy, they learned about the process of growing plants and they got a chance to find out a bit about one of the county's historical figures.

The kids even took a three-mile historical walking tour of Shillington, taking in sites that showed what the borough was like while Updike was growing up there. And they read some of Updike's poems that the author wrote for children.

Drago said he plans to enlist some students who live in the Shillington area to tend to the garden over the summer. And, he said, he hopes to expand the project in the future.

More garden beds will likely be added in the years to come, and an effort will be made to grow similar produce to what the Updikes grew more than 80 years ago.