OTISFIELD – Work on the Otisfield Community School’s garden project is blooming as spring weather and renewed financial resources enable the small perennial garden to expand into a communitywide 45-bed vegetable garden project.

Nearly $27,000 has been raised over the past three years through donations and grants to keep the garden growing, said Principal Linda Park, who along with head custodian Barbara Maguire supervise the project.

Several years ago, Park decided to have the kindergarten class plant a perennial garden on the side of the building. The garden grew to a schoolwide, four-sided perennial garden filled with flowers.

Last spring, students in the school’s Garden Club began a raised vegetable garden in front of the school using donated seeds and seedlings and by last summer excavation work had begun for the new 45- by 28-foot greenhouse donated by Helen Solm, a summer resident who often stops by the school.

Additionally, excavation on the large parcel in front of the school began and now 45 planting beds are under construction. They will be used by students, staff and community members. Park said the project has been going so well that additional beds were put in when two area organizations, Casco and the Progress Center, which work with brain injured and disabled adults, asked to adopt some of the beds.

“I just like helping and giving my time to the school,” said Danny Thompson, who along with fellow fourth-grade student Brendan Bedell were busy hauling posts from a pile to the new garden beds Wednesday afternoon as third-grader Nick Balzano helped Maguire with another vegetable bed.

Park said there will be 45 vegetable beds once the garden is completed, including some beds for growing pumpkins.

While the school started the year off with a $12,000 grant, Park said she hoped the excavation of the trees, which were felled to make way for the larger garden, would help pay for some of the vegetable beds, lumber and mulch. But they didn’t bring in any money.

“We were really in a bind,” she said. By writing another grant, the school received another $6,000 that allowed it to start building the vegetable beds and buy plastic for the greenhouse. Another $5,600 Oxford Community Building Program grant, from the Maine Community Foundation, was received helping to supplement the cost of the vegetable beds.

“I was very fortunate,” Park said. “Without the two extra grants there was no way.”

By the end of January, all the vegetable beds had been adopted without even sending a notice home to parents.

“The project was so big. The school kids, Barbara and I couldn’t do it. We had to hire people to do the walls on the greenhouse, and the kids are making the walkway,” she said.

Park said the mission of the community school garden is to bring school children and community members together to work for a sustainable planet and will a promote healthy community and provide vegetables to low-income individuals. Additionally, the project preserves open space, provides access to it and creates a recreational and therapeutic opportunity for the community as a whole.