Even for someone who grows plants at home, this garden had a surprise for Anna James.
During a tour of the new accessible raised beds at the Clyde Austin 4-H Center in Greeneville, summer camp instructor Patrick Fox pointed to the unassuming green leaves of the potato plant.
“I’ve seen potatoes as the food obviously, but I’ve never seen the actual plant, so that was pretty interesting to me,” says Anna, a summer camper and ninth grader from Grainger County.
The 4-H center—one of four in the state along with Crossville, Columbia and Middleton—draws elementary and middle school students from mostly East Tennessee counties in the summer and fourth and fifth graders from Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia during the school year.
The garden, with its five large, raised beds provides a new science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) experience centerpiece at Clyde Austin, which has for many years featured physics experiments, fossils, rocks and minerals, as well as taxidermy animals like deer and turkey and live animals such as an albino catfish and a red-striped snake named Red.
Nearby, an orchard hums with bees in a hive, which were added after Scottie Fillers, center director, arrived in 2017.
“Adding a garden to enhance our K-12 STEM and 4-H programming, and to do it in such a way that provides additional accessible-friendly learning experiences for the region we serve, has been an exciting opportunity for our center,” Fillers says.
The garden builds job skills and provides therapeutic gardening to all, including students who use wheelchairs and would have trouble accessing a ground-level garden, says Tanner Pruett, who oversees the camp’s education program. He mentions plans for a possible greenhouse to propagate their own plants.
“We have really big dreams,” Pruett says.
Representatives from the center, 4-H, UT Extension, UT Gardens, UT Martin, Greene County, Greeneville schools and Comcare, an agency for adults with disabilities, submitted a proposal for the garden to the UT Grand Challenges initiative and won a grant. Clyde Austin leaders consulted with staff at the UT Gardens, Knoxville, who offer summer camps and programs like Sow 2 Grow, which teaches teens with intellectual and developmental disabilities work preparedness, social skills and stress management.
In Greeneville, summer campers and students of all abilities benefit. Gardening helps children learn about the source of food and connects them to nature, which has been shown to reduce stress, Pruett says.
Construction on the beds began last winter, and the first harvest of vegetables like cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes and, of course, potatoes arrived in summer 2026.
Anna, along with 12 other campers, learned about the garden’s plants one July morning.
“How many of you or your parents garden at home?” asks J.R. Arnold, the center’s STEM instructor.
About half the group shot up hands. He explains how the raised beds were built with layers of logs, sticks, soil and leaves, which will decompose and help fertilize the plants.
Arnold and Fox, an incoming Herbert College of Agriculture freshman from Greeneville, discuss soil, mulch, cover crops and companion plants. The campers sampled cucumbers harvested that morning.
“What else does gardening do for us?” Arnold asks the group.
Answers include “helps us grow healthy food” and “something to do when you’re bored.”
“Guys! Mindfulness. Do you know what mindfulness means? Living in the moment. When we garden, it slows down our brains, and we focus on what we’re doing right then,” Arnold responds. “That is a very important part of gardening, if you ask me.”
While others in the group finish planting vinca flowers, Anna takes another look at the potato plants.
“I love this garden,” she says. “I hope it lasts here a long time.”
4-H campers learn about plant science and even taste some of the harvest in the new accessible garden.
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