FLUVANNA COUNTY, Va. (CBS19 NEWS) -- “Students are actually seeing where their food comes from, and how crops are grown, or how plants at the store, where they come from. They see them grow from seedlings into full plants,” said Russell Jennings, the Food and Culture Teacher at Fluvanna County High School.

Students at FCHS are getting their thumbs green, after collaborating with Virginia Tech and Pleasant Grove to work on two garden plots at the Pleasant Grove Community Garden.  

The AP Environmental class has a lot of layers to it, and it begins in the greenhouse where the students see their own plants grow right before their eyes.

“Kids get hands-on experience of what I’m teaching and the science in the classroom,” added Jennings. 

After they got to understand what goes into taking care of plants, the class went to Pleasant Grove Community Garden to get an even bigger hands-on experience and take care of their own plots.

“Just learning to maintain a garden of all things, I’ve never learned how to do that,” said Ariana Grier, a student at FCHS.

The students do everything from putting down mulch to watering their plants and even doing something special for their community.

“We have several plots like these that are actually being grown specifically for the food bank,” said Jan Pavlacka, the chairman of the Fluvanna Garden Committee.

Since this group of students is the first to undertake this gardening project, the students are able to see what this type of community work can do for their futures.

“Knowing what we should do around our house to conserve energy, and also to help out the environment that we’re living in,” said Grier. 

“We’re learning how to reduce my imprint on the Earth,” added Tinsley Porter, a student at FCHS.