APPLETON — Fox River Academy students Miranda and Nicholas Verhagen will play a crucial role in the cultivation of the new Pierce Park Neighborhood Teaching Garden: They'll help water it.

The Verhagen family has volunteered this growing season to tend one of five raised beds that make up the teaching garden, a grass-roots pilot project designed to draw the Appleton neighborhood's residents, students and employees closer to nature and each other.

"We went to Menards and bought some sunflower seeds," said fifth-grader Nicholas, 11. "They're supposed to get about 6 feet tall."

The teaching garden officially opened Monday on park property behind Jefferson Elementary School. The school also houses elementary grades of the Fox River Academy, a public charter school that focuses on environmental education.

"This gives kids more autonomy to get outside and get some of that soil between their hands," said Sandy Vander Velden, who teaches the charter school's third- and fourth-graders.

Representatives of key partners — including Goodwill Industries of North Central Wisconsin Inc., the Community Garden Partnership and the Appleton Neighborhood Revitalization Program — cut a string barrier festooned with seed packets and then let students explore. They all received take-home seeds.

"I was thinking, the flowers we're getting, maybe I could put them in (the teaching garden)," said third-grader Miranda, 9.

She had chosen packets with pictures of purple coneflowers and a money plant whose petals, with a little imagination, resemble silver dollars.

There now are six Community Garden Partnership sites in Outagamie, Winnebago and Calumet counties, but each is a direct reflection of its environment, said urban garden coordinator Susan Richardson.

In the teaching garden, two beds represent Jefferson and charter school families. A third bed stands as an outdoor classroom for the charter school. The fourth and fifth beds are reserved so community members can plant herbs and flowers.

Peter Capaul, whose daughter Amanda is a Jefferson kindergartner, walked with his younger daughter Calista, 3, around the garden Monday and said he values the extra lessons in store for students.

"It's really a vital part of understanding, not only growing things and how things grow but responsibility, and (what it means) to develop a stake in something," said Capaul.

If all goes well, additional teaching gardens may take root at Edison Elementary School and Wilson Middle School, said Jim Vanden Boom, Appleton's neighborhood revitalization coordinator.

Today, Cynthia Verhagen, whose family lives in Grand Chute, plans to dig into the dirt. She's hoping for a yield of tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, carrots, beets and radishes.

In coming years, students may be able to enjoy a "salad day" with greens and vegetables they pick straight from the garden, Vander Velden said. Soon, though, the charter school will plant the seeds for fall fun.

"Our goal here is to put in pumpkins," she said.