Editor, Gazette-Journal:

This week marks the end of another school year. With that, another year for the Mathews Master Gardener/4-H Fourth Grade Garden Project for 2012 has come to a close. This has been our 15th year of the program and we have all learned, once again, that "gardening is an experiment," and this year’s "experiment" was a great success!

What a wonderful bunch the fourth graders are! All the parents of this year’s class can be very proud of how hard they worked and how much they learned! We are very thankful to all the fourth grade teachers, too, and all the school staff headed by Lee-Jackson principal Drew Greve for letting us take an hour of class time each week, for 10 weeks, March through May. The Master Gardener teachers provided lessons in basic botany, how we can help the environment, "Good Bugs and Bad Bugs," and how important plants are to the world. We also gave the students a hands-on activity in planting seeds,...