Students at Mary Queen of Apostles are rolling up their sleeves to do their part for the environment — and their bellies.

Garden Club members are in their second year tending to a monarch butterfly sanctuary near the school’s front entrance on Elmtree Road in New Kensington. Plants such as milkweed and marigolds sprout near the flagpole to boost populations of the endangered butterflies, which fell from 384 million in 1996 to 60 million in 2019.

“It’s nice because we provide food for the butterflies before they go off to Mexico for the winter,” said Julia Skowronski, 13. “Then, after they lay their eggs, they have somewhere to come back to. You really get a new respect by seeing how hard it is to grow things.”

The club potted tiny milkweeds to distribute to the student body in hopes everyone would plant a monarch station at their home.

Julia is among the dozen or so club members who volunteer twice a week and several weekends to manage the monarch spot and a vegetable garden abundant with tomatoes, beans, potatoes, celery, zucchini and peppers.

The kids plant, prune and harvest the veggies to be served in the school’s salad bar and sauteed as side dishes.

“We made salsa and also learned how to preserve. Everything tastes so much better than when it’s from a grocery store,” seventh grader Martha Palumbo said. “The cucumbers are 10 times better.”

Classmates Stella Magnusen and Jocelyn Knox said it’s fun to get outside, but the garden takes a lot of work.

“It was trial and error the first year,” Stella said. “The place we planted, the soil had too much clay, and things didn’t really grow big. We moved the garden this year, and everything is so much better.”

Joelle Ondriezek, 13, said students have used innovation to find success.

“We learned how to use string so the plants grow up and the leaves don’t lay in the grass and get blighted,” she said. “The sun can get underneath this way.”

Jocelyn said growing a variety of veggies has lent itself to culinary creativity. The students cooked zucchini fritters and eggplant dip, neither of which they had tried before.

“We taste-tasted against stuff from the grocery store, and home-grown just doesn’t taste the same,” Joelle said. “It’s so much better. They smell better, too.”

Her mom, Kristy, serves as a garden liaison and helps club members with the myriad raised beds and rows of zinnias and sunflowers for pollination. There also is a bee hotel, made from a birdhouse stuffed with bamboo.

“There are so many benefits to getting kids involved with gardening,” she said. “It gets them outside, away from their electronic devices and interacting with nature.”

Kids also are more inclined to give vegetables a try if they plant, care for and harvest them, she said.

The club is exploring ways to expand its garden-to-cafeteria program to use hydroponics or a greenhouse or cold frame so they can contribute to school lunches throughout the year.

Lauri Pujol, food service director, said she enjoys highlighting the homegrown produce on lunch trays.

“We make zucchini muffins, and we always make sure the kids know it’s from what they grew,” Pujol said.

The staff uses 30 pounds of spuds when mashed potatoes are on the menu, so, Pujol said, “I’m really excited to see if those grow well.”

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