Bear River High School students grow and sell flowers for Mother’s Day

GARLAND, Utah (ABC4) — Flowers are a classic gift for Mom on Mother’s Day. At Bear River High School (BRHS) in Garland, you can buy some flowers for Mom while supporting a good cause.   

Every year the students at BRHS spend months growing hundreds and hundreds of plants, including some beautiful potted flower arrangements. Then, the week before Mother’s Day they put all of those plants up for sale. The proceeds go towards keeping a number of programs funded.

A customer wheeled a trolley away from one of the school’s two greenhouses Wednesday afternoon. It was filled with flowers. That customer was just one of a dozen to show up within the first hour of the annual sale.

“I took one ag. class and fell in love with the whole thing,” a student named Spencer told ABC4. 

Like Spencer, fellow student Caleb enjoys the greenhouse class. He said, “I love the hands-on aspect of it.”

The two aren’t afraid to get their hands a little dirty, which is good because it is bound to happen in this class.

“When we start out, we’ll get a bunch of trays of little flowers called plugs,” Spencer explained. “We’ll take them over to our other greenhouse and fill trays full of soil and transplant them into that tray.” With the sheer number of trays they have to fill, he said it takes some time.

“We have started some plants from seeds,” Caleb stated. “Mostly our jalapenos, the other peppers and our tomatoes.”

Planting starts as early as January and it’s up to the students to fill the greenhouses with green plants. However, the class is not just about teaching students how to have green thumbs.  Their teacher, Linus Coyler explained: “Also, what it takes to run a greenhouse business. [They learn] some of the bookkeeping that they’re going to have to do. [They learn] some of the material that the greenhouses are made of and what those types of things cost. It’s horticulture and business together.”

The students tend to the greenhouses on a daily basis leading up to the week before Mother’s Day. Then it’s time to get a hands-on feel for business by hosting a three-day sale. 

“Part of the reason we do this sale is to fund the program for next year,” explained Coyler. “A lot of the proceeds from the sale this year will go to buying plugs for next year’s students. It also helps with our horticulture program and then also it supports our [Future Farmers of America] program.”

Talking about the sale, Spencer said, “It just makes you feel so good that stuff that you worked on is getting sold for so much and it’s helping our school just keep on trucking along.”

Coyler has about 90 students who are taking his greenhouse class this semester and all spots are filled for next year as well.  “Very popular, yes,” he said. “We have a waiting list for this class.”

For students like Spencer and Caleb, the class may help them in their future careers. “It was a good learning experience, and I think I’ll take these lessons and continue to use them throughout my life,” said Caleb.

And the sale may help them bring a smile to their moms’ face this Mother’s Day. “She loves African daisies, so I got her a lot of those,” Spencer stated.

The sale runs Wednesday May 7 through Friday May 9 at BRHS from noon to 3:30 pm. The students expect to sell out by Friday. The greenhouses are located on the most southwestern corner of the campus, next to the tennis courts.