This spring will mark the 37th year that Polk Countys public high school students will hold their annual plant sale, marking a tradition of horticulture education that provides students with a true experience of agribusiness from seedling to sales. These annual plant sales also represent a long-standing tradition of community connection to the hands-on learning lab in the schools greenhouse.

Polk County Highs agriculture teacher Chauncey Barber and his students will begin to sell vegetable plants and ornamentals on Thursday, April 1, at the school. The students plan to contribute $500 of their earnings from the plant sale to the schools Relay for Life effort.

I enjoy all the agriculture classes and I look forward to the plant sale because it provides us with a sense of accomplishment and enhances our communication skills as we have to take orders for plants and communicate with our customers, says Jamie Hrobak, a sophomore in the Horticulture II honors class. It also gives us the chance to interact with community members.

Retired agriculture teacher Richard Smith recently recalled the history of the green house learning labs that started in Polk Central High School in the early seventies. Smith, who continues to help with the high schools program, says that when he began teaching in 1972 at Polk Central, then construction teacher Jim Christopher and his students had recently completed the first green house on the schools grounds. The first student plant sale was held in the spring of 1973.

When Superintendent David Cromer and Polk Central Principal Carthon Hinson hired me in 1972, horticulture was beginning to be taught more in high schools, recalls Smith. They wanted to build a strong horticulture program and provide students with a quality learning lab that would become self-supporting and would also provide a place where the community could come buy plants. The green house also provided the students with the experience of the entire plant growing process.

The green house provided a connection to the community as local experts could visit and provide students with hands-on learning lessons. At the time, Smith says, the schools green house was one of the very few local sources selling vegetable and ornamental plants. The first three to four years, adds Smith, the students could not grow enough plants to keep up with the demand.

From the beginning of the horticulture program and throughout the years, the school system and community have been and continue to be very helpful and supportive of the students, says Smith appreciatively. Chauncey (Barber) and his kids have carried on the learning lab tradition with an increasing number of students experiencing the whole process from planting to growing and then selling.

For the past five years, Barber and his students have carried on a new tradition of visiting each of the systems elementary schools to deliver tomato plants to students and to share agriculture information.

PCHS agriculture students will begin to sell vegetable plants and ornamentals on Thursday, April 1. For more information, call Chauncey Barber at 828-894-2525.