Cody Pereseau, a La Pine High School Life Skills student, and Cheri Stark, an educational assistant, deliver flower displays Wednesday to La Pine Elementary School. The students grow and arrange flowers and plants and sell them for Mother’s Day. This year, the students also made wooden planters to sell at the sale.

LA PINE — Standing in a humid greenhouse filled with moss baskets, yellow and purple pansies and pink petunias, Melissa Allen explained the process of growing flowers like a pro gardener.

Allen, a 17-year-old junior at La Pine High School, talked about aerating the soil surrounding plants to help them breathe better, and pinching back leaves to produce better blooms.

“With some of the more daintier plants, you have to be more careful,” said Allen, clad in knee-high boots, and a flowing navy and white patterned skirt.

But she’s not a gardener, and the greenhouse she’s working in is at her school. Allen is one of 16 students in Ken Thorp’s Life Skills program at the school. The program aims to give mentally and physically challenged students practical real-life skills through various activities, such as working at the public library or planting ponderosa pines at Sunriver, so they can be employable upon graduation.

“The greenhouse is a big puzzle piece in that,” Thorp said.

Thorp thought of the greenhouse project as a way for students to practice teamwork and build skills when he taught at a school in Hillsboro. He brought the project to La Pine High School six years ago with the help of grants.

There’s a large 50-by-25-foot greenhouse and a smaller one stocked mainly with flowers. So far, the project is self-sufficient.

Every spring before Mother’s Day, the students host a plant sale to fund greenhouse maintenance. This year, they’ll be selling birdhouse and bench planters, which the students made as well. From planting to managing the greenhouse to properly maintaining the flowers to operating a cash register at the Mother’s Day sale, the students are involved in every aspect of the operation.

Earlier in the year, Thorp added worms to the picture.

Students collect food scraps from La Pine Elementary School and some bring scraps from home to feed the worms so the critters can eventually produce fertilizer. The worms, which live in plastic bins with soil and scraps, consume the scraps. The worms’ waste is high in nutrients, which is used for fertilizer in gardens.

Using the worms teaches students to use available resources and be thrifty, Thorp said.

“It’s a way of us being resourceful instead of spending money on chemicals for plants,” he said.

Thorp hopes to expand the greenhouse offerings from plants, flowers and herbs to vegetables and other edibles.

Ryan Burrese, a sophomore at La Pine High School, is in his second year of gardening at the greenhouse and said it’s been a learning experience — from how to check plant growth to effective watering.

Other benefits?

“We get to see different flowers and get to be outside enjoying the sun,” he said.

Senior Josh Mason, 18, is the seed man. He coordinates the seed orders and enjoys witnessing the transition from seeds to full-blown plants.

“A couple weeks later, you’re like, ‘Wow, look at that,’” Mason said.

If you go

What: Hawk Country Greenhouse’s sixth annual Mother’s Day Plant Sale

When: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 5-6 and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 7-8

Where: Hawk County Greenhouse, La Pine High School, 51633 Coach Road, La Pine.

Contact: For information, call 541-322-5371.