Gabrieal Babin carefully turned the rich, dark soil. The sixth-grader’s classmates soon would follow her to plant beans just inside the fencing. The 12-year-old bent down to examine the earthworms and other bugs wriggling through the overturned earth. She fingered what appeared to be a small, round seed.

“What’s this?” she inquired of Claire Ackroyd, the master gardener overseeing the work.

“Oh, that’s just a bit of hops left over from making beer,” came the reply laced in a slight English accent. “It was in with the compost. I think the worms especially like it.”

Ackroyd turned to several other pupils from the Veazie Community School, who pursued her like ducks chasing after their mother. She ripped open a package and doled out seeds, rattling off instructions.

“Bean seeds need to go about 6 inches or a hand width apart,” she instructed. “They have to be planted 1 inch deep, which is about the size of your knuckle.”

The novice gardeners oohed and aahed as Ackroyd placed the large, colorful beans in their upturned, dirty palms.

“They are awesome,” she agreed with her young charges.

Ackroyd’s dream for a community garden came alive last month as pupils from Lauree Gott’s sixth-grade science class, Bangor firefighters, Bangor Garden Club members, graduates of the master gardeners’ program at the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension and community members planted the first crop.

The garden is on land facing the Hogan Road owned by United Technology Center, the vocational and technical high school that serves 31 towns in and around Bangor. The first crop grown in the 60-by-60-foot plot will include the usual lettuce, beans, tomatoes and peppers, along with giant sunflowers, corn and pumpkins. The garden was planned so harvesting can continue into the fall when the pupils return to their classroom as seventh-graders.

That first sowing was the culmination of a more than yearlong effort to create an organic community garden. Initial funding for the project came from a $1,500 grant from the Harvest Fund, a program of Maine Initiatives. Materials and labor worth far more have been donated by area businesses and residents, according Ackroyd.

It was her vision and hard work that got the idea off the ground. An adult educator at UTC, Ackroyd has a master’s degree in horticulture and owned the Growing Concern in Orono for nearly two decades. She has involved schoolchildren, UTC students, city employees and community members in every aspect of the project.

The Veazie pupils will continue using the garden as a learning tool until they graduate from eighth grade in 2003. Last fall, the sixth-graders first laid eyes on the fallow field that would become their science project. In November they brought leaves to the site for composting and measured the plot using math skills to calculate the square footage and determine the amount of lime needed to balance the soil’s pH, or acidity level.

In March, Ackroyd went to their classroom to talk about what kinds of vegetables they wanted to grow. A month later, while studying photosynthesis or how plants turn light and water into food, they planted seeds under grow lights. In May, they transplanted the seedlings to the garden.

As a result of their involvement in the community project, the students have formed a garden club at school and volunteered to tend the garden over the crucial summer months. Several of the pupils said they had flower and vegetable gardens at home they tended with their families. After working on the garden at UTC, two sixth-grade girls decided to create a garden of their own.

Molly Jones and Rachael Joyce, both 12, live across the street from each other in Veazie and have been friends for as long as they can remember. They’ve decided to plant and tend a flower garden over the summer. The girls said they wouldn’t have thought of gardening together, even though they do just about everything else together, if it hadn’t been for the school project.

“It’s better than just going to school and sitting in a classroom,” declared Jake Silver, 12, as he helped spread mulch to make paths around the beds. “This is actually getting out and doing something. And, you get something to eat for your work. I can’t wait to taste the cucumbers.”

The youngsters are not the only ones eager for harvest time. Roland Spellman, a retiree who lives in Brewer, tried unsuccessfully for years to grow vegetables in his back yard. When he heard about the community garden, he asked for a small plot.

“The soil in my yard was just no good,” he said, assisting the children in attaching plastic to a large frame erected by UTC students to create a mini-greenhouse. “I planted beans, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, onions and Brussels sprouts. I’m up here a couple of times a week. It’s nice to get back into gardening.”

Last summer, the soil in the field between Fire Station No. 5 and UTC wasn’t much better than the dirt in Spellman’s back yard. Ackroyd added compost, manure, lime and other nutrients before the soil was ready for planting.

Firefighter Brian Higgins said he was glad the station had embraced the project. Higgins and his fellow firefighters helped erect the 4-foot-tall fencing and place the wooden birdhouses atop the posts. Higgins said he was grateful that bluebirds and swallows already had taken up residence because they eat mosquitoes.

Higgins added that he likes continuing the long tradition of firefighters gardening on land adjacent to firehouses. He observed that helping the youngsters plant gave him an opportunity to interact with them in a different way than he usually does when he’s on the job.

The community garden is just the first in a series of projects Ackroyd has planned for the unused land surrounding UTC. Next on her list is a wildlife garden designed to attract birds, reptiles and amphibians. A production greenhouse next to the school where classes can be held in the winter, and culinary students can learn to cook with fresh ingredients, could be in place as early as September, just after fall classes begin.

Between weeding and thinning the garden, Ackroyd continues to seek grants to fund various aspects of the projects. The Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation recently awarded the project money to buy a tractor, and local businesses as well as the City of Bangor have donated plants, mulch and other materials.

“Our vision for this garden is that it will be the important beginning of a much larger garden,” Ackroyd wrote in one grant application. “We believe the time is ripe to show people that sustainable, organic, local, safe food production and environmentally sound, diverse landscaping are realistic, obtainable and easily learned.”

Twenty years from now, Craig Arsenault of Veazie may realize he learned all those things when he tended the garden with his classmates. But last month, as he toiled at planting pole beans and sunflowers, the 12-year-old was not sure how he felt about gardening.

“I’m going to like it when it’s all done, so we can eat what we’ve grown,” he said without looking up from his task.

That’s a sentiment adult gardeners Ackroyd, Spellman and Higgins wholeheartedly endorse.

For more information on UTC’s community garden, call 942-5296.