GLEN ELLYN – St. Petronille Catholic School seventh-grader Megan Pihlstrom was pleased to see the tomatoes and cucumbers she helped plant a few months ago are now ready to be picked.

She planted the garden before summer break as a sixth-grader, and she is now harvesting the garden as a seventh-grader.

"It's cool seeing the process," said the 12-year-old Glen Ellyn resident, who was recently harvesting the garden with her fellow classmates. "It was fun to see the whole class put it together."

But planting the garden was more than just a lesson into learning how much work goes into taking care of a garden. The food that is being harvested from the garden is being donated to the Glen Ellyn Food Pantry and other local charities.

St. Petronille sixth-grade teacher Krissy Wind came up with the idea for the garden.

"It actually started with a lot of prayer because this is the year of mercy," Wind said. "I really was thinking a lot about how I could be merciful to other people... I thought it would just be a really cool project that we could be doing every year and that could touch so many people."

The garden replaced a space that previously was filled with wood chips and two dead trees. Wind said she was impressed with how much work the students put into planning and then planting the garden. The students planted such things as lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, zucchini, beans, herbs, cucumbers, onions and strawberries.

"They planned out the spacing of it all, they built the beds and then they planted everything," she said. "The enthusiasm was amazing. They just took this, and they ran with it. And then one of the priests came and blessed everything. He put holy water on each of the beds."

The project taught seventh-grade student Aidan Murray of Glen Ellyn about the value of teamwork.

"It's a lot faster if there are people working together," Aidan said.

Wind admitted she herself doesn't have a green thumb.

"I tried gardening at home, and it doesn't work," she said.

The school's sixth-grade students and their families signed up to take care of the garden.

"We had some bugs in the beginning, so we brought spray, we fertilized and the families helped with that too," Wind said.

The students plan to harvest the garden through October. Her current sixth-graders also are helping with the task, and they will dig up the garden at the end of the season.

"There's still a lot of green tomatoes," Wind said. "And then they will have to decide what they want to plant and do the actual planting in the spring."

She hopes the project is helping teach the students about how they can be merciful to other people.

"They've learned about the importance of giving and how good it feels to do things for other people," Wind said.