Garden Club Plants 100+ Moringa Trees on St. Paul’s Campus

St. Paul’s Garden Club members with Moringa starts.

The landscape of St. Paul’s School’s campus recently received some exciting new additions, thanks to special guests who visited St. Paul’s garden club. Schneider and Jameson, two of CHP’s university scholarship recipients, returned to St. Paul’s on break from their university program in agronomy to help garden club students plant over one hundred Moringa trees on campus.

CHP began supporting Moringa initiatives in Petit Trou over a year ago when CHP supported health workers received Moringa starters as part of a pilot project involving both the community health and agriculture program leaders. Labeled by some as a miracle, and others as a superfood, Moringa trees are packed with vitamins, minerals, and protein. The trees are also relatively simple to plant and care for—they are easy to germinate, highly drought tolerant, and typically produce seed pods by the second year. Gardeners in Petit Trou report that the main challenge of cultivating the trees is keeping animals away that like to nibble on the Moringa. 

Agro Raphael (pictured right) at a Moringa farm in neighboring Bacconnois.

As Schneider and Jameson return to university to learn more about best practices in Moringa, students are monitoring the young trees. Agro Raphael, the director of the garden club, has plans to bring many more Moringa trees to the area in the coming months. He recently visited a Moringa farm in neighboring Bacconnois, where farmers from Petit Trou will buy Moringa seeds to eventually plant over 2,000 trees in an orchard located near St. Paul’s School.

We look forward to sharing more about these exciting projects with Moringa as they develop!