As Timothy Jenkins, above, works on creating a walkway for the garden, Fernando Smith, right, 15, watches over the vegetables in the 50-by-20 foot garden next to the school.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Bill Murphy Bill Murphy

COVENTRY Watch out for those pesky ants, because they will ravage a garden.

It was timely advice from William “Billy” Gardiner Jr., one of several participants in the Washington Annex Work-Study Program for students with various disabilities. He and three classmates toiled in their new flower and vegetable garden yesterday at Coventry High School.

Holding a rake, Gardiner, 17, talked about why he enjoys working in a garden, gesturing to a sprouting yellow gourd.

“I just love to work. I’m a hands-on person. We have gourds over here and — we have an ant,” he said suddenly, staring down.

Down came his foot. “Never want ants. They eat the gourds.”

Gardiner is among 19 students in the high school’s transitional-education program, for students 14 through 21, which last year received a $3,000 grant from the VSA of Rhode Island to create a garden. The Pawtucket nonprofit agency provides grants for arts-related activities for disabled people. The Coventry students also solicited donations from local businesses and received help from classmates in general education.

The program has received grants for five years for various projects. The garden project is a first, to teach them how to maintain one and how it relates to everyday life.

No one took notice of Gardiner’s bug extermination, and the students kept busy tending to other areas of the 50-by-20 feet garden, as they have most days, weather permitting, during the extended summer-school program. The sun-drenched plot bloomed with black-eyed Susans, petunias, daisies and a fruitful row of basil, mint and sage. The garden teemed with vegetables — green beans, pumpkins, gourds and tomatoes — as well two newly planted river birch saplings and some shrubs.

Timothy Jenkins, 19, used a shovel to spread a pile of pulverized stone dust, which is being laid to make a walkway. “I like to clean it up. I pull weeds out of the garden, to make it nice for others,” Jenkins said.

Jessica Zettl, 17, poked at a mulch pile with a shovel, trying to decide whether to spread it.

“It’s all wet,” she said, recalling Monday’s rains.

The students started planning the garden in January, said Charleen Ricci, one of two teachers — the other is Jeannine Nester — who worked with them.

They received expert advice from Kurt Van Dexter, a landscape architect from North Kingstown, who showed them slides of gardens he has created. Lessons continued on how to plant seeds, and on the different kinds of plants and garden designs.

When the winter weather broke, the students broke ground, moving rocks and pulling up weeds. They next wrote letters to local business seeking donations and then knocked on doors to follow up. So far, they have received mulch, gardening equipment, the trees and shrubs, annuals, perennials, paint and a small wishing well.

Expected to come as a donation, is a metal fence and wheelchair access, Ricci said. Students from other classes, including woodworking, environmental science and landscape design have pitched in, too, with some making a bench.

Ricci is hoping for a second bench and a gazebo, a couple of tables for outdoor classes and perhaps an arbor for the front entrance. In September, once everything is harvested, they plan to have a fall festival.

“It gets the kids involved in teamwork. … We’d like other classes to get in involved too, perhaps make a mosaic or have welding create something,” Ricci said. “We hope the more kids that get involved the less likely it will be tampered with because they will take pride in it.”

lsparks@projo.com