Tilling and planting have begun at the Suffolk community and learning gardens.

There are three community gardens in Suffolk—the East Suffolk Garden, the Holland Garden and Chorey Park Apartments Garden — along with one learning garden at Kilby Shores Elementary School. They are intended to promote a healthy lifestyle and healthy eating habits for all community members.

Students at Kilby Shores already have begun to plant their garden this year.

“I learned it’s a lot of hard work, but it pays up, because you get a lot of good food,” said Saleena Lynch, fourth grade student and member of the school’s garden club. “I like the planting and how I see them grow.”

Other garden club members agree with Saleena in that they love working in the garden.

“I like the food. I really like the food,” fourth-grader Jonathan Peebles said.. “Mostly I’ve been gardening all my life, and I really like plants.”

The learning gardens teach school children more than just how to grow plants.

“Starting from the school setting is the best way to get kids started in healthy living and active behavior,” said Jaya Tiwari, executive director with the Suffolk Partnership for a Healthy Community.

Last year, the garden club at Kilby Shores grew collards, which the present garden club harvested and ate this school year. Millicent Dove, fourth-grade teacher and garden club leader hopes that each grade level will have its own plot for planting a variety of vegetables this year.

Dove would like to have the students plant all the ingredients needed for the salad. She feels this would be easier for both students and their teacher than having to prepare collards to eat from the garden.

Fourth-grade students not only are incorporating science lessons into tending the garden, but they are also learning about history. They are learning colonial planting practices taught to the early settlers by Native Americans.

They will be planting beans, squash and corn in the same manner as settlers and Native Americans. They will be using a method called “three sisters” in which they begin with corn, with beans allowed to run up the corn stalks, which in turn shade the squash.

“It is a very sustained method of farming,” Dove said.

The goal of community gardens and the learning garden is to promote a healthy lifestyle with healthy eating habits and intergenerational activities and to help meet economic needs of the community through providing food resources, education, and more.

The gardens are spread out across the city so that everyone can take advantage of the gardens.

“We wanted the community gardens to be based in locations that were easily accessible to the community,” Tiwari said.

The gardens will produce food for the economically disadvantaged while also giving community members, especially seniors, something to work on together.

“We have engaged seniors,” Tiwari said.

By summer the gardens will be producing food for people in Suffolk who need it most. At least 75 percent of the produce will be donated to the economically disadvantaged at city food banks and homeless shelters, Tiwari said.