BONNER — A new native plant garden was unveiled Wednesday in Bonner as part of a community-wide project spearheaded by the Bonner Milltown History Center.
The garden, located behind the Post Office and the History Center, was created with help from Missoula County grants and significant involvement from local students.
"Today, with everything in place, it's like, wow, it really worked," Bonner Milltown History Center co-director Judy Matson said.
Watch to learn what's behind the planting of the new native plant garden:
"The garden, I think, is helping the community in ways that we probably don't know," Matson told MTN.
The project came to life with sixth-grade students from Bonner School planting native plants under the guidance of mentors from the History Center.
"We wanted to bring our sixth graders out to plant native plants to get them to appreciate the long history of this space, to care for this space so they knew what it meant to be part of a community," said Bonner School social studies teacher Dylan Huisken said.
The students will continue to study and tend to the garden as they progress through middle school.
"The kids absolutely love the project because they're outside of the classroom, they're outside of the walls, and they're applying knowledge. They're learning in the room, but it's rippling out into the community," Huisken said.
Huisken plans to have the students monitor their plants' growth throughout their middle school years.
"They're sixth graders now, I'll have them all the way until eighth grade, we'll be able to come back towards the last day of school of their eighth grade year to see how their plants have done in nearly three years," he said.
The project serves multiple educational purposes, including teaching Indigenous history and the importance of native plants.
"All these things matter if kids are learning deep, accurate history of their space, and native plants play right into that," Huisken said.
For Huisken, the garden project helps students develop as whole people and community members.
"They get to have this positive effect and learn through doing. And really get them to develop not just who they are as an academic learner but as a whole person, as a community member and this is stuff we want them to think about now so that they can be good neighbors," he said.
While initial funding came from Missoula County and private donations, the garden's success is rooted in local community involvement.
"Having the young people get a sense of what it's like to be from Bonner is. It's a dream come true," Matson said.
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