Gardening in the Schoolyard · Gardening in the Schoolyard: It’s a math, social studies, science, reading, art . . . kind of thing By Pamela R. Kirschbaum 18 HOW TO Discouraging

Volume 9 1999

Gardening in the Schoolyard:It’s a math, social studies, science,

reading, art . . . kind of thing

Tom Tyler, PresidentExtension Agent, EnvironmentalHorticultureVirginia Cooperative Extension3308 South Stafford St.Arlington, VA 22206-1904(703) 228-6423E-Mail: [email protected]

Bobby Wilson, Vice PresidentArea Extension AgentAtlanta Urban Gardening1757 Washington RoadEast Point, GA 30344(404) [email protected]

Karen Hobbs, SecretaryExecutive Office of the PresidentCouncil on Environmental QualityOld Executive Office Building,Room 360Washington, DC 20503(202) 395-7417E-Mail: [email protected]

Jeanie Abi-Nader, TreasurerManager, Organic Research FarmFrontier Natural Products Co-op3021 78th St.Norway, IA 52318(319) 227-7996, ext. 1222E-Mail: [email protected]

Jack Hale, Ex OfficioExecutive DirectorKnox Parks Foundation150 Walbridge RoadWest Hartford, CT 06119-1055(860) 561-3145E-Mail: [email protected]

Marti Ross BjornsonFreelance Writer/Editor/Educator1807 Grant St.Evanston, IL 60201-2534(847) 869-4691E-Mail: [email protected]

Felipe CamachoYouth/Community EducationCoordinatorSustainable Food Center434 Highway 183 SouthAustin, TX 78741(512) 385-0080E-Mail: [email protected]

Julie ConradResource Coordinator, TucsonCommunity Food Bank GardenP.O. Box 40222Tucson, AZ 85717E-Mail: [email protected]

Debbie FrymanCommunity Development Consultant9037 Lucerne Ave.Culver City, CA 90232(310) 838-9338E-Mail: [email protected]

Gary GoosmanFree Store/Food Bank Director5899 East WoodmontCincinnati, OH 45213(513) 357-4660E-Mail: [email protected]

Tessa HuxleyExecutive DirectorBattery Parks City ParksConservancy2 South End AvenueNew York, NY 10280(212) 267-9700E-Mail: [email protected]

American Community Gardening AssociationOfficers & Board of Directors

Nancy H. Kafka, Multilogue EditorUrban Project ManagerThe Trust for Public Land33 Union St., 4th FloorBoston, MA 02108(617) 367-6200E-Mail: [email protected]

Dale LevyDirector of Community ProgramsOklahoma City Community FoundationP.O. Box 1146Oklahoma City, OK 73101-1146(405) 235-5603E-Mial: [email protected]

Ben LongDirector of Neighborhood GardensCivic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati2715 Reading RoadCincinnati, OH 45206(513) 221-0991E-Mail: [email protected]

Sally McCabe, National OfficeOutreach Coordinator, Philadelphia Green100 N. 20th St., 5th FloorPhiladelphia, PA 19103-1495(215) 988-8845E-Mail: [email protected]

The Rev. Chester PhyfferPastor, Selecman United Methodist Church3301 Southwest 41Oklahoma City, OK 73119(405) 685-1215E-Mail: [email protected]

Leslie Pohl-Kosbau, Program ChairDirector, Portland Community GardensPortland Parks and Recreation6437 S.E. Division StreetPortland, OR 97206(503) 823-1612E-Mail: [email protected]

Phil Tietz, Nominations ChairAssociate Director, Green Guerillas625 Broadway, 2nd FloorNew York, NY 10012(212) 674-8124E-Mail: [email protected]

Cheryl WadeOutreach Specialist, University ofWisconsin Center for Biology Education425 Henry Mall #1271Madison, WI 53706(608) 255-4388E-Mail: [email protected]

STAFF

Janet Carter, National OfficeOutreach Coordinator, Philadelphia Green100 N. 20th St., 5th FloorPhiladelphia, PA 19103-1495(215) 988-8800E-Mail: [email protected]

Karen Payne, Program CoordinatorFrom the Roots Up1916A Martin Luther King Jr. WayBerkeley, CA 94704(510) 705-8989E-Mail: [email protected]

Elizabeth Tyler, Board Liaison3850 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. #209Chicago, IL 60659(847) 866-1181E-Mail: [email protected]

ACGAADVISORY

BOARD

Blaine BonhamPennsylvania HorticulturalSociety, Philadelphia Green

Lisa CashdanTrust for Public Land

Mark FrancisUniversity of California–

Davis

Ricardo GomezUSDA Cooperative

Extension Service

Terry Keller

Richard MattsonKansas State University

Gene RothertChicago Botanic Garden

Cathy SneedThe Garden Project

Larry SommersNational Gardening

Association

ON THE COVERStudents anda mentor at

Martin Luther King Jr.Middle School

in Berkeley, California,harvest vegetables

from theEdible Schoolyard, one of the best-

known school gardens.

Photograph:Ene Osteras-Constable

Gardening at School

I often wonder what I would be doing if I hadn’t had the good fortune to discover horticulture, thanks to my parents and grandparents. I remem-ber vividly my grandmother’s roses in her postage-stamp backyard in Queens, New York, and how mygrandfather pronounced “compost” in his Scottishbrogue. I became an expert at saving marigold seeds.Thankfully, they started me on the easy ones.

With the exception of a few programs started bysome visionary people, gardening was something welearned at home. Who would have thought a gardenwas anything more than a necessity for the war effortor to feed families? What if gardening wasn’t passed toyou from an adult relative or family friend? Whatabout those “natural born gardeners” who never get thechance to plant a seed because they never had thechance to dig in the soil or plant a seed?

With this issue of your Community GreeningReview, we focus on gardening with schools, a perfectvehicle for introducing gardening as a lifelong hobbyand source of inspiration, and so much more. Inspiredby ACGA’s increasing number of “calls for help” andthe recent high-profile of successful programs, manyof which are featured in this review, writer PamKirschbaum gives us direction about how to proceedwhether you’re providing modest technical assistanceor starting a program for your entire school system.

All of us can relate to a frantic call from a teacherto help with a garden unit, in May. Workshops atACGA conferences are standing-room-only if present-ers focus on schools or kids. And what would yourlocal community garden be without the curious neigh-borhood children happily filling the wheel barrow withcompost? As you’ll read in the feature, school garden-ing is more than just an activity to get the kids outsideor to grow a present for mom on Mother’s Day. Afterreading these interviews with practitioners, TA provid-ers and researchers, we hope you’ll extract some “bestmanagement practices” on which to develop your ownprograms or policies for successful partnerships.

School gardens will certainly be a feature of work-shops and tours as ACGA descends on Philadelphia forour annual conference September 30 – October 3. Tenyears after the unforgettable “The Beet Goes On”conference, we return to Philly and our host organiza-tions who work to bring Philadelphians the largestgreening program in the country. At press time, ourhost committee and longtime members were furiouslypulling together a conference only fitting for ACGA’s20th anniversary. The ACGA Board looks forward tothis milestone and encourages you all to come toPhiladelphia for a very special conference andcelebration.

Yours for a Garden In Every School,

Tom TylerCo-chair, Publications Committee

President, ACGA

Published by the American Community Gardening Association 1999 • Community Greening Review • 1

CONTENTS2 FEATUREGardening in the Schoolyard: It’s a math, socialstudies, science, reading, art . . . kind of thing

By Pamela R. Kirschbaum

18 HOW TODiscouraging Vandalism

©1999 American Community Gardening Association. CommunityGreening Review, Volume 8, is published by the American CommunityGardening Association (ACGA), c/o The Pennsylvania HorticulturalSociety, 100 N. 20th Street, 5th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103-1495.Web site: http://communitygarden.org

ACGA is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization of gardeningand open space volunteers and professionals. Established in 1979,ACGA promotes the growth of community gardening and greeningin urban, suburban, and rural America.

Community Greening Review is a tool for advocacy, publicity,networking, and providing the best technical assistance available forthe design, planning, management and permanence of gardening,greening, and open space programs that emphasize community.

Community Greening Review provides a forum where profes-sionals, volunteers, and supporters working on community garden-ing, greening, and open space issues can relate ideas, research, opin-ions, suggestions, and experiences.

The words “Community Greening Review,” “American Com-munity Gardening Association,” the Review’s cover logo, and theAssociation’s logo are exclusive property of the American Commu-nity Gardening Association. ACGA holds exclusive rights to all ma-terials appearing in Community Greening Review, except where noted.

Letters to the Editor & Article SubmissionsCommunity Greening Review welcomes letters to the Editor andarticle submissions. Address letters, story ideas, or complete articlesto Editor, Community Greening Review, c/o Tom Tyler, ExtensionAgent for Environmental Horticulture, Virginia Cooperative Exten-sion, 3308 South Stafford St., Alexandria, VA 22206, (703) 228-6423.

Reprinting ArticlesRequests to reprint articles should be sent, in writing, to CommunityGreening Review, ACGA, c/o The Pennsylvania HorticulturalSociety, 100 N. 20th Street, 5th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103-1495;(215) 988-8785; Fax (215) 988-8810.

SubscriptionsA subscription to Community Greening Review is a benefit ofmembership in ACGA. Annual dues are $25 (individual); $50 (orga-nizational); $10 (affiliate of organizational member); $100 (support-ing); $250 (sustaining); $500 (corporate). Library subscriptions are$25 per year.

Editorial and production services provided by:• Pamela R. Kirschbaum, InfoWorks, Richmond, VA, (804) 750-1063.

Printed on recycled and recyclable paper to help the environment.

EDITORPamela R. Kirschbaum

REPORTYouth Garden Winners

26

15

CITYSCAPEPhiladelphia: A Horticultural HotbedBy Pamela R. Kirschbaum

REPORTFrom The Roots Up

20

27

Schoolyard, Page 2

Horticultural Hotbed, Page 20

Youth Winners, Page 26

29 REPORTStanding Our Ground: New York City’sEmbattled Community Gardens Win ReprieveBy Lenny Librizzi

BOOK REVIEWS/PROFILESuccess with School GardensReviewed by Julie Conrad

Digging DeeperReviewed by Lenny Librizzi

2 • Community Greening Review • 1999 Published by the American Community Gardening Association

FEATURE

BYPAMELA R.

KIRSCHBAUM

California’s “A Garden in Every School” pro-gram is trying to keep up with the interest in buildinggardens and the need for curricular materials. Teach-ers, parents, community gardeners and neighborhoodhelpers throughout the nation are creating and tend-ing living classrooms and finding imaginative waysto make them part of the curriculum, sometimes year-round. School gardens are, in fact, thriving in NewYork as well, if they are on protected school grounds.

Launching and integrating gardens into everydayschool life, fueled by the inclination towards hands-on learning, the concern about children’s diets, andthe promotion of environmental stewardship, is clearlya trend—despite the nationwide preoccupation of pub-lic school administrators with standards of learningand accountability and the need for gardening to in-

corporate the standards. One indication of the extentof interest is the competition for the $750 seed-and-equipment grants from the National Gardening Asso-ciation: 2,000 applications for its 300 annual grantsto school and youth gardens. And in 1998 the Na-tional Wildlife Federation fielded more than 3,000calls about its schoolyard habitats project, a 1995 off-shoot. Because of the great interest by schools, in 1995schoolyard habitats became a separate project in thelong-standing backyard wildlife habitat program. Thefederation has certified more than half of the 700-plusschoolyard habitats in the past three years.

“Mainly,” notes Mary Ann Patterson of the Ameri-can Horticulture Society, “you have a whole genera-tion of kids who are not going to enjoy the explora-tion of green spaces that the baby boomers [and older

Gardening in the SchoolyardIt’s a math, social studies, science, reading, art . . . kind of thing

Third graders studied the bees buzzing around the flowers. Fifth graders planted grass.Science classes learned about compost. And the Garden of Love, named by students at P.S. 76in Harlem, with its crab apple and mulberry trees, its berries and greens and worms, offered abit of hope in a dense urban neighborhood.

That was before November 2 when bulldozers rolled in, destroyed the garden, and left tiretracks, a few broken flowerpots and rubble—the remains of six years’ work and almost $30,000in grants and donations.

While many New York City gardens on vacant lots, such as the Garden of Love, are besetwith uncertainty and woes, across much of the country school gardens of one kind or anotherare thriving.

Joe

Gille

spie

Sixth graders at CrescentElk Middle School,

Crescent, City, California,proudly show what they

have nurtured andharvested.


generations] enjoyed. We boomers said, ‘Bye Mom,see you at dinner,’ and we went out and explored. Therewas always a park or an undeveloped area or a fieldwhere we could just run around and play. Our kidsdon’t have this—they have all these ‘arrangements’and we know where they are every minute of everyday.” Concerns about safety and considerably moredeveloped land contribute.

That’s her personal opinion, Patterson says, butmany agree with her, and not just those who workwith urban children. “My fifth graders come to meknowing very little about plants,” says Ann Powell, ateacher with a varied garden project and wildlife habi-tat at Tallulah Elementary School, Tallulah, Louisi-ana. “At the beginning of the year they do not want toget their hands in the dirt, but it doesn’t take long forthat to pass.” And Sandra E. Nemeth, a teacher andschool gardener in Mecklenburg County, Virginia,notes that although most of the school’s students livein a “totally rural school district that does not containany towns,” their families usually do not farm or gar-den and they have “very limited life experiences.”

Jack Kerrigan, the Ohio State Extension agentwho oversees the master gardeners who work withthree inner-city public schools in Cleveland, says theyoungsters are “so amazed to see a carrot or a radishcome out of the ground because they just have no ideathat’s where these things come from!” A suburbanCalifornia teacher mentions the manicured lawns, thesurprise that vegetables don’t really originate in malls,and the fear of punishment for “getting dirty” somechildren have.

School gardens provide often irreplaceable ex-periences, academically and culturally, for students.Despite the issues—funding, space, technical help,maintenance, inexperience, vandalism, measurabil-ity— school gardeners find imaginative solutions andlaud their projects. Says Powell: “I am so proud ofmy outdoor classroom. It took some doing to get itand the funding and do all the work involved. But Iwouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Reinventing the Past

Cultivating schoolyards is not new. Before mostAmericans lost touch with their agrarian past, Cleve-land Public Schools had a “world-renowned” horti-culture program that began in the early twentieth cen-tury and lasted through the mid-1970s. In fact, saysDennis Rinehart, Ohio State Extension Agent for Ur-ban Gardening, A.B. Graham, the man who started 4-H, got the idea from the Cleveland schools. “The kidsgardened at school or at home, and the teachers wentout to check on them,” Rinehart explains. “Then a newsuperintendent came in and decided it didn’t belongin the curriculum.” Busing “unlinked” schools andneighborhoods, cutting summer ties, and funding be-came a challenge. Garden facilities fell into disrepair.

As school gardening was waning, communitygardening in Cleveland, one of the original 23 citiesto get federal money for urban gardening, was takinghold and plots at 10 schools became community gar-dens. But children are getting involved again—threeyears ago fourth graders at Benjamin Franklin Schoolbegan working in a plot near 100 community garden-ers. Master gardeners meet one day a week with theFranklin children and with students at two other ele-mentary schools. A community garden was added thisyear at one of the schools. Kerrigan, the ExtensionAgent for Horticulture and Natural Resources, workedwith the master gardeners to gather curriculum mate-rials and design a year’s worth of lesson plans. “Weworked closely with the teachers so we’d know whatthe fourth grade proficiency exam covers, and we fo-cus on those skills the kids need—measuring, mak-ing and interpreting graphs, vocabulary, journal writ-ing.” At Franklin, the old horticulture building is onceagain clean and in order, and students do indoorprojects with Wisconsin Fast Plants, rapid-cyclingbrassicas developed by a University of Wisconsin plantpathologist. One is a mustard species that goes fromseed to seed in just six weeks.

One outcome has been that fifth graders nowteach, with master gardener help, a bread class. Eachclass picks a grain and shares its history and impor-tance with their younger schoolmates. “One of thethings the kids didn’t understand,” says Kerrigan, “wasthat bread was made from a plant. And so we grow asmall section with some grains, some wheat and oats,and then show them how it’s ground into flour. Thenthe kids make bread at school.”

The project, funded by a two-year $33,000 grantfrom the Cleveland Foundation, is not high cost, hesays. One half-time person works with the two newschools and is organizing the curriculum into a con-sistent format. Summer Sprout, a city-funded, exten-sion-run program, helps out with supplies and services.Kerrigan would like to involve the community gar-deners, mostly retired neighborhood residents, moreclosely with the children and to expand the program.At Franklin the test scores have gone up on the sci-ence section of the fourth grade proficiency exam—five points with the first group and 20 percent withthe second. “We can’t show that individual kids areimproving,” he says, “but it’s certainly demonstratingthat the group involved is getting better scores as weimprove our ability to work with them, to learn whatworks and what doesn’t.”

So far the program involves only 200 kids, but asKerrigan notes, “It’s a school system in terrible dis-array, so to have an impact in just three of the elemen-tary schools is important.”

Growing Beans, Attracting Butterflies

The size and style of school gardens that teach-

Across much

of the country

school gardens

of one kind or

another are

thriving. . . .

At Benjamin

Franklin School

in Cleveland

the test scores

have gone up

on the science

section of the

fourth grade

proficiency

exam.


ers, administrators and volunteers are building rangefrom carefully constructed raised beds for vegetables,flowers along a fenced perimeter, and plantings in re-cycled tires and rooftop containers to butterfly andwildflower plots, native plant tracts, and wildlife habi-tats. Some combine school and community garden-ing in one parcel or in adjacent spaces, some havegreenhouses and market what they produce, somegrow for the school cafeteria, some donate their har-vest to food banks. Composting, especially wormcomposting, is popular—children learn both about thelife cycle of worms and about renewing the earth.

In New York City where School Chancellor RudyCrew, a lifelong gardener, would like every school tohave a garden, some gardens are in the earth and oth-ers are constructed directly on bricks and concreteusing two-by-fours set on newspaper or plastic withspace for drainage. “Some are out-of-this-world fabu-lous,” says Linda Huntington, GreenThumb’s educa-tion coordinator. The city’s community gardening arm,GreenThumb provides supplies such as top soil forraised beds, seeds, tools, lumber, bulbs and shrubs;has a full-time garden designer who works on a cus-tom design with teachers who want gardens; andoffers workshops on how to use the garden in the cur-riculum.

After Crew took over the city’s nine worst schoolsas part of the Chancellor’s District, he found the moneyto install gardens at them, and he has encouraged dis-trict superintendents to do the same. More than 150schools, double the number in 1995, have gardens.They grow everything, Huntington says. Some haveedibles, others don’t. “School gardens are just pilingon by the dozens,” she says. “It’s in the air in educa-tion. Teachers are aware that it’s a good thing. Mostthrilling is that we’re helping these city kids learnwhere food comes from. They really have no idea.”

Brooklyn GreenBridge’s director, Ellen Kirby,

seconds that. GreenBridge, Brooklyn BotanicGarden’s community outreach program, works regu-larly with 10 school gardens and has another batch invarious stages of implementation. The program, be-gun in 1993, is under the direction of City Parks Foun-dation, a private nonprofit that supports specialprojects. For the three Chancellor’s District schoolsin Brooklyn, GreenBridge provided two days of in-tensive training for the teacher teams involved andthe foundation hired a contractor to install gardensdesigned by a professional garden designer.

The botanic garden has always had an educationalcomponent, including a well-known children’s gar-den. That, plus a Sanitation Department grant to teachcomposting several years ago “got us into schools andcommunity gardens and neighborhoods,” Kirby says.Most recently, in collaboration with a housing devel-opment and three other groups, GreenBridge hasopened a community garden learning center inBedford Stuyvesant for regular use by nearby schoolgroups. Through “City Kids Get Green,” GreenBridgeoffers monthly workshops that “give teachers and par-ents a chance to see what’s involved in setting up aschool garden.” Help with design, curriculum andother aspects is available, but schools are on their ownfor funding. Says Kirby: “We strongly advise peopleto use the different resources of all the city’s greeninggroups.”

In fact, when Trust for Public Land (TPL) beganits school garden program in the early ’90s and foundteachers interested, it got together with GreenThumb.“They were the main organization supporting schoolgardens then,” says Paula Hewitt, a former teacherwho with Andy Stone and Garrick Beck designedTPL’s children’s program. “But they didn’t have thestaff to do what teachers needed, which was be in thegarden with them.” Now both groups train teachers totake the lead and help with the physical building ofgardens.

GreenThumb’s annual conference for gardenersalso offers more for teachers and students and is evenattracting some teen-agers. At J.F. Kennedy HighSchool in the Bronx, political know-how and activ-ism by a social studies teacher and his students ulti-mately won them permission to garden on part of alarge vacant lot next door. “The kids cleaned the lotand maintained it for a year—it was a dump, an awfulmess—and now it’s one of the best gardens in the city,”says Huntington. A new school slated to be built onthe land will incorporate the garden so Kennedy, thecity’s largest high school, doesn’t lose it. In the worksalso is a summer program that pairs teens from theHigh School for Environmental Studies, who willteach GreenThumb-developed workshops, withyounger kids at community gardens.

A number of schools have more than one type ofgarden for use by different grades and for different

Gracie Broadnax, one ofCheryl Wade’s

“gardening angels,”repots a fern in her

classroom at MendotaElementary School inMadison, Wisconsin.

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“Many teachers do not know how to teach with those ‘teachable moments’out in the garden and they don’t want to,” says teacher Libby Helseth, who gar-dens with her fourth graders at Indialantic Elementary School in coastal Florida.

But for those who take to the land, the rewards, they report, are immense.From hands-on math and plant studies to discovering the role of climate and theimpact of weather to figuring out calories, keeping journals, and creating art, stu-dents can ask infinite “why” questions and teachers can stoke their interest andstretch their learning.

“The possibilities are endless,” says Joe Gillespie, sixth grade teacher andgarden coordinator at Crescent Elk Middle School in Crescent City, California, whouses Life Lab Science Program’s The Growing Classroom and other materials. Hisstudents do controlled experiments growing plants with or without mulch, organicfertilizers or a row cover of some kind. Students test soil samples or grow seedlingsin soils from different sources to compare the effect of soil type and compaction.They check the viability of seeds of different ages—“since we seem to accumulateseed packages”—and the effect of seed depth on germination and growth. Studentskeep notes and observations in a garden journal, turned in regularly for credit.

“We also have a long-term experiment going,” reports Gillespie, “in whicheach group has a miniature worm bin in a plastic storage box.” Fifty worms go inthe bins in the fall; then students predict, based on what they know about wormreproduction, the number they will find in June. “Students have to feed and care forthem all year,” he says. “We might place a couple of bins in the greenhouse to seeif there’s a difference in population if they are kept warmer.”

Gillespie’s students learn about marketing, nutrition and leadership by plantingand selling produce throughout the school year to support the garden. They plant avariety of lettuces, cabbage family crops, peas and some root crops that they thenharvest, wash and bag in one-pound increments and sell to parents, teachers andthe general public. “In this way,” Gillespie says, “we have been able to support theentire project for the past few years. We also plan and prepare for a fall HarvestFestival and a spring Mother’s Day plant sale, both good fund-raisers that provide amultitude of learning opportunities. Much of our garden curriculum centers aroundthese three things.”

Georgia landscape architect Ann English, who has designed and been involvedin a number of garden-curriculum projects, says that “unless the teachers adopt theproject as their own, a garden cannot sustain itself with only volunteer labor.”Gardens can be designed, though, to meet curricular needs. At one high school shedeveloped a theme garden with plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s works that theEnglish department uses and an ecology club maintains; third graders use a nativeflora garden, installed by parents, to reinforce community concepts; and gardenbetween the sixth and seventh grade wings of a middle school incorporates Greekelements to match the social studies curriculum and plants that attract butterflies.

CREATIVE TEACHING

curricular purposes. Cheryl Wade, who runs a garden-ing program at two Madison schools through the Cen-ter for Biology Education at the University of Wis-consin, oversees an annuals garden tended by kinder-gartners, a “secret garden” maintained by two secondgrade classes, and a vegetable plot used by 10 classesat Mendota Elementary School. “To my knowledge,”she says, “there was no garden on school grounds inMadison before I started.” All the gardens are organic,and the children can and do snack on tomatoes, cu-cumbers, tomatilloes and other goodies they grow.Wade finds “wild and wacky, different-colored andshaped, ugly, big, fast-growing stuff” to plant. Sheplants, with the use of row covers, in April; spinachgoes in the ground in the fall for spring harvest.

She began her Gardening Angels in 1991 withgrants from two companies and 31 participants thefirst summer; a university grant from the KelloggFoundation for food security allowed her to join thecenter. And Madison’s community gardeners haveprovided support. Originally, Wade started the gar-den for low-income children of color, but the programis now for anyone, she says, because most children’s“knowledge about the source of their food is just aslow.” And some children’s nutrition and diet may bepoor. At Mendota, Wade has run the garden year-round; she recruits five to 25 children each summer,teaches the basics, goes on field trips, sells at the farm-ers’ market, and waters the kids, the garden and her-self on “bathing suit” day.

After six years, she is prepared to hand the projectover to the teachers. The university has presented oneworkshop and sent some 20 teachers to summer sci-ence courses, and Wade has supported the teachers intheir use of the garden to enrich the curriculum. “Inthe beginning,” says Wade, “I would garden outsideand beg—literally beg—teachers to allow me in theclassroom to share something about the earth, gar-dening or food. Slowly the numbers went up.” Thispast year she worked with all the teachers in someway. Instead of 80 students she reached 300, and thestudent council now sells plants along with popcornand pencils. Still, she thinks that without an involvedgarden manager and teachers, or when the grant runsout, “the garden will fall in.” But, she adds happily,“the kids might riot.”

California: One Perspective

While gardens are sprouting at schools fromFlorida to Arizona, Delaine Eastin, California’s Su-perintendent of Public Instruction, has institutional-ized the concept in her state with a 1995 initiative thatwould put a garden in every school by the year 2000.“That’s the vision,” says Deborah Tamannaie, the nu-trition education official charged with coordinatingthe program. But with 8,000 eligible public schoolsand more difficulty getting federal money, it’s likely

Teacher Alan Haskvitz’s middleschool students made a muraldepicting the history of food.

Alan

Has

kvitz


to take longer. “If we get enough funding,” Tamannaiesays, “it’s reasonable to have a garden in every schoolin three to five years.”

California’s project is run by the nutrition educa-tion and training program within the education de-partment. As such, it benefits from U.S. Departmentof Agriculture grants for nutrition education as wellas from state funds. A state survey found in early 1996

that at least 1,000 schools have gardens they use forinstruction. To begin a garden, schools can apply forgrants through a process that’s competitive, “partly,”Tamannaie notes, “to assure that nutrition educationwill take place.” They also need to have support fromteachers, parents and community members. By Au-gust 1998 start-up grants from the state had gone toapproximately 100 school districts and child-careagencies, representing 450 garden sites.

The thrust behind the project is to encourage chil-dren to make healthier food choices, participate morefully in school, and develop more appreciation for theenvironment. Project supporters cite research that kidsdo better in school when they are well-nourished. Theintent of A Garden in Every School is to cultivate ataste for fresh vegetables and fruits early on and tohelp kids make the connection with the source of foodin this highly agricultural state. Advisers from groupsthat support school gardens offer direction.Tamannaie’s office provides a packet of garden infor-mation to schools that request it, oversees the grants,keeps a list of curricular resources, and supports amodel program for the Garden in Every School projectat St. Helena Elementary School in the Napa Valley.In the planning stages, Tamannaie says, are supportcenters around the state where schools can get moretechnical assistance and possibly call on an experi-enced gardener to come on site and demonstrate.

Until funding was cut for the study, University of

California, Davis, researchers had been evaluating theimpact of the school garden at St. Helena. Do studentgardeners eat more vegetables than their nongardeningpeers? they wondered. “They did see some positiveresults,” Tamannaie reports. She is hoping that, as thesupport centers develop, help will be forthcoming fromthem for more assessments.

The St. Helena K-5 model program uses hands-on, garden-based nutrition education, integrated intoclassroom studies, and pulled together from a varietyof available materials; it is expected to produce samplecurriculum this year. Individual teachers decide howmuch and how often to use the garden, and a part-time project coordinator provides training, resourcesand assistance. The kids grow, in school-wide raisedbeds, a wide variety of foods that they use in class-room lessons and that they help prepare in the cafete-ria for special celebrations.

Named Peter Pepper’s Pyramid Power Project bythe students, the model involves everyone: teachers,administrators, food service personnel, parents, busi-ness people, community members. All help with con-struction, maintenance, nutrition education activitiesand funding. Napa County’s master gardeners offertechnical assistance, the Culinary Institute of Americahosts hands-on cooking adventures, and a local nur-sery, grocery and wineries donate seeds, labor andmoney. Other businesses regularly support the projectwith products and services.

Overall, Tamannaie reports, A Garden in EverySchool is working out well. Most schools, even themost urban, can find some space. Some, when it isstructurally safe, are successfully gardening on theirrooftops. “If a school isn’t interested,” she says,“maybe it will be down the road. We have plenty ofinterested schools now. ”

ACGA, the National Gardening Association(NGA) and the American Horticultural Society (AHS)intend to build on A Garden in Every School momen-tum. “The California campaign has created an oppor-tunity for interest and excitement,” says David Els,NGA’s representative. “The idea is so large that it’sdifficult for any one organization to get its arms aroundit, so we’re asking now what we can do and what formit can take.” Funding is an issue, he says, and a sig-nificant grant will perhaps be the impetus for solidi-fying the project. Says Els: “A campaign gives us theopportunity to raise public visibility or affect publicpolicy. We will have made a very definitive statementabout the importance of using plants as an effectiveteaching tool, not just an alternative. The best way todo this, of course, is to have an objective. Maybe it’snot a garden in every school, but it encourages theincorporation of plant science into the curriculum.”

One of California’s best-known school gardens,the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King MiddleSchool in Berkeley, has already garnered publicity and

Joe

Gille

spie

California students lunchon fresh-picked

vegetables from theirlarge and varied

school garden.


awards. Its founder, noted restaurateur Alice Waters,was honored last December by the U.S. Secretary ofEducation for her contributions. Students, with sup-port from a garden coordinator, grow a host of com-mon and uncommon vegetables that end up in theschool’s newly outfitted kitchen and on the cafeteriatable. They are, by all accounts, learning about plantsand nutrition, and having fun.

The only other state, known to date, with a for-malized school garden plan is Utah, which signed anagreement in June 1998 with Mel Bartholomew’sSquare Foot Gardening Foundation. Through the col-laboration each fourth grade class is incorporating thesquare foot gardening method and a 10-lesson gar-dening course specially designed by Bartholomew intoits science curriculum. The foundation is donating athree-foot-square tabletop garden with a soil mix anda top square-foot grid to every elementary school inthe state, while the state office of education is provid-ing a “prominent and receptive environment” and con-tinuous follow-up for the pilot project, the agreementnotes.

Getting Started

How do you begin? What about money, supplies,curriculum and help? California teacher AlanHaskvitz, for example, writes grants—like Powell inLouisiana and Nemeth in Virginia, he benefitted froman NGA stipend. He has the kids bring a penny a dayto buy plants, keeps a wish-list for parents, gets helpfrom the water district, and calls on nearby businesses.“The community, that’s the key thing,” he says. “Youjust can’t believe how valuable the community is toyou if you ask and if you use their expertise. I just callpeople who know.”

Kathy Bosin, program director of Gateway Green-ing in St. Louis, notes that in their experience schoolgardens have been “the most difficult part of the [com-munity development] puzzle.” In a city with 13,000vacant lots in 1998, Gateway uses gardens as a ve-hicle for community development and has buildingcommunity sites down pat. “But in thinking aboutschools for the past two years, we find it has to in-volve the neighborhood,” Bosin says. “Community iskey. We want groups that can design, build and main-tain the garden.” Her process is the same for commu-nity and school gardens, and at least 10 people haveto sign on to each project. “A group has to do all itcan—clearing the land, bringing in soil—before we’llstep in and help. Struggling with development leadsto ownership,” she says, and increases sustainabilityover time.

Of 41 outdoor school gardens in fall of 1998,Gateway has been in on the start of 24 and is affili-ated with the others. Impetus has come from teach-ers, active and retired, and neighbors, who often helpmaintain the garden in summer. Master gardeners and

other volunteers are vital. The organization has anarrangement with North County Technical HighSchool, which has a horticulture program and eightgreenhouses, to grow all its vegetable starts. Gatewayprovides the seeds, flats and soil mix, and the kidscount it as their community service. The relationshipbegan when Gateway needed help figuring out howto use PVC pipe to build indoor grow labs; now vol-unteers build 25 or 30 a year on an “assembly morn-ing,” and teachers who apply and attend a workshopcan pick one up along with the NGA’s Grow Lab cur-riculum guide. More than 120 classrooms now havelabs.

Gateway offers workshops at its demonstrationgarden on Saturday mornings, and lots of teacherscome to learn gardening techniques, such as how toset up a bed. The organization also promotesvermicomposting with classroom teachers “becauseit’s a natural fit and another way to get into schoolgardening,” Bosin notes. “The idea is to provide teach-ers with an activity that they can do all year. Provid-ing all the material is important. They can pick up thephone, call us and we give them everything. The onlyway they won’t succeed is if they’re totally disinter-ested. And if you do the worm composting project,you cover all the third-grade state science standards.”The St. Louis-Jefferson Solid Waste ManagementDistrict has provided two successive grants for theprogram.

Working with master gardeners and gardeningvolunteers; drumming up matching funds and suppliesfrom city departments, waste authorities and neigh-borhood businesses; attending local, regional or na-tional greening groups’ workshops geared to schoolgardening; involving older students, seniors, the par-ents association, and neighbors; and using AmeriCorps

St. Louis areateachers getsome plantingtips during ademonstrationat GatewayGreening’s BellCommunity andDemonstrationGarden.

Gate

way

Gre

enin

g


Club, a small private foundation, nearby Redwood Na-tional Park, the state 4H recycling/reuse project, andlocal businesses helped. The school district providedfencing, and Gillespie won an NGA grant in 1996.He bought a Turner greenhouse at cost, thanks to thecompany, with $1,500 raised from Earth Day beach-cleanup pledges.

The solid waste authority uses the compostingarea for monthly workshops and to sell compost binseach year. “The authority has been an excellent part-ner,” Gillespie says. “They have helped us getAmeriCorps members to assist our composting effortsand to take care of the garden during the summer.”Gillespie, who is helping other schools in the districtset up gardens, has found volunteer help an on-again,off-again affair. The school requires fingerprinting ofoutsiders for the children’s safety, which has discour-aged volunteers. Parents, who don’t need fingerprint-ing, and AmeriCorps members have been the best. Thechildren’s energy, he says, discourages older peopleand others. To minimize the summer dilemma, heplans to plant the entire tract with pumpkins andsquash this year to hold down weeds and to harvestfor a fall festival.

Ann Powell, who in three years has incorporatedvegetable beds, agricultural crops representative of thearea, composting, wildflowers, tulips, butterfly andhummingbird plots, and a wildlife habitat into theschool garden, has had considerable help from the soilconservation and extension offices and Tallulah com-munity members in general. Sandra Nemeth,Buckhorn Elementary School in South Hill, Virginia,has partnered with the local power company, parentvolunteers, and Future Farmers of America membersat the nearby high school, which has a greenhouse,who help her fifth graders start their seeds. InIndialantic, Florida, fourth grade teacher LibbyHelseth found summer help through her agricultureagent from people who had court-ordered communityservice obligations. She began the organic garden atIndialantic Elementary School, on a barrier islandbetween the Indian River Lagoon Estuary and theAtlantic Ocean, several years ago with help fromanother teacher, a master-gardener parent, and grantand PTO money. Helseth later won a grant to estab-lish a native plant garden.

The Square Foot Nutrition Project in Tacoma,Washington, has a USDA grant and partners with thelocal parks district and the nonprofit Tahoma FoodSystem. Its coordinator, David J. Eson of PierceCounty Cooperative Extension, works with four el-ementary schools with on-site gardens. The project,to teach nutrition to residents eligible for food stamps,is “most likely one of the first few to use Food StampNutrition Education Project money for gardening,”Eson says. Workshops for all Tacoma Public Schoolelementary teachers this spring offered local and

Turning “wastelands of old and cracked asphalt” in one of the nation’s oldestcities into active centers of learning and community use may seem like a pipe dream,but that’s just what’s happening in Boston. When some schools began to clean uptheir land, they didn’t have enough money and the process took a long time. So in1995 a partnership between the Boston Foundation and the City of Boston—theBoston Schoolyard Initiative—was born. Other private foundations also work withthe Boston Foundation.

“We have a very holistic approach,” explains Kirk Meyer, the initiative’s direc-tor. “We want sustainable schoolyards not only with green spaces, but also withoutdoor classrooms and play structures, places that youth groups and summer campsand before- and after-school programs can use, and also that are open spaces for theneighborhood.” The city is spending $2 million a year from its capital budget, andthe foundations are putting up money, with Meyer making sure the contributions arewithin their guidelines. About a third of the city’s 120 public schools are nowfunded; 16 projects are finished, 24 are in the works, and another 10 will receivefunding shortly.

“We have a whole process, basically a community design and developmentprocess, and we award grants to organize and get everyone in the neighborhood andschool around the table,” he says. Once concerns such as safety, parking, and educa-tional uses are ironed out, a consensus of needs and desires emerges. “You can putin capital improvements in an urban environment and in a few years they look aw-ful,” he says. “We are building a constituency that has a stake in keeping the spaceprotected and in good shape—so teachers will consider it an integral part of theschool, not just a recreation area.”

As gardens have gone in at some schools, more schools now want them. Thelatest proposals have mentioned greenhouses, a request that makes the schooldepartment nervous about safety. Gardens at schools are a challenge, Meyer says,because of the summer season. Busing rules out neighborhood schools, which meansfor a successful vegetable garden, a school and its neighbors must work together tomaintain the garden throughout the year. Dorchester High School, with a “mini-farm” of almost an acre, “had to work to get stipends for summer youth workers.”Permanent garden sites at two elementary schools have water hookups that theschool department arranged, but Meyer says they try to locate gardens close enoughto run a hose from the building. At one site parents have hired Boston Urban Gar-deners to work with the summer youth program. “The community greening groupsplay an incredible role,” he notes, “but they can’t do it for nothing.”

From organizing to construction takes close to two years, a slow and deliberateprocess that helps build ownership. The initiative is meant to be a five-year project,but that will leave almost half the schools untouched. Still, the city is getting a greatdeal for the money, Meyer says, in terms of visibility and “immense good will.” Inone residential community with a huge high school in its midst, the animosity waspalpable until the plants went in. Then neighbors stopped to chat with the principalabout the project and ties are being reestablished.

Boston hopes to provide a model for other cities with its public-private partner-ship for schoolyard development.

TRANSFORMING BOSTON’S SCHOOLYARDS

and similar service groups are ways that many schoolgarden enthusiasts use to begin or expand their pro-grams. Sixth grade teacher Joe Gillespie expanded asmall garden, begun in 1994, at Crescent Elk MiddleSchool in Crescent City, California, to an entire 170by 100 foot lot with 50 raised beds, a toolshed and alarge composting area with community help. The lo-cal Solid Waste Management Authority, the Rotary


national examples of garden-based learning, demon-strations of learning activities, and details on gettingstarted and local resources.

In Los Angeles County the Gardening Angels,volunteers with horticulture training, help schools starta garden and assist teachers weekly on campus withlessons, plant advice, and fund raising. Sponsored bya parent organization through L.A. County Coopera-tive Extension, the group gets upwards of 75 requestsa year. “We have more than 80 schools on the waitinglist,” says outreach coordinator Bonnie Freeman, “sonow we ask schools to send someone, a parent or com-munity member, and we’ll train them.” Teachers can’tvolunteer at their own school.

Freeman says the cost to start a garden is under$100, and the great majority are raised beds built onasphalt over a layer of gravel using 4 by 8 foot re-cycled plastic, redwood or fir “logs.” “We try to find aspot near water and the classroom with six hours ofsunlight.” The award-winning program, begun byRachel Mabie, director of Los Angeles County Ex-tension Service, reaches more than 33,000 children,70 percent from minority populations, and was askedby the City of Santa Monica to put gardens on its 10campuses.

Our survey of school garden programs showsthere is no single formula for success. Commonthemes emerged, however, from interviews. A schoolgarden requires an articulation of the program’s goalsand the wholehearted support of the school principal.Money and supplies acquired through the school bud-get, grants, donations, community partnerships and/or fund raising are necessary. Training for participat-ing teachers, both gardeners and nongardeners, on howto use the garden to support the curriculum and toencompass standards of learning is important. Otherconsiderations include whether the garden programwill need volunteers, if volunteers will be available,and how to maintain the garden during the summermonths.

Integrating a Garden into the Curriculum

California’s initiative has some irony for AlanHaskvitz, an award-winning teacher—one of onlythree dozen elected to the National Teachers Hall ofFame—who had to “battle” to start a garden in Wal-nut, California, some 15 years ago. Then his gardenwas ripped out after his classroom was moved fiveyears ago. But after starting over with a small site, “ahole in the concrete really,” Haskvitz now has a 20 by40 foot garden, constructed entirely of recycled ma-terials, that “belongs” to the 35 eighth graders in hishomeroom at Suzanne Middle School and is used byhis social studies classes. “We have grapes going upthe wall, cotton plants—because the kids have to knowwhy the Civil War started, a pumpkin that won’t die,roses, tomatoes, peppers, beans,” he reports. Though

it uses land less efficiently, students plant what theychoose, based on their studies, in recycled bus tires,so they know their own project and become protec-tive. Much of the harvest goes to the homeless. In thesummer, the custodial staff looks after the garden.

Integrating the garden into the curriculum hasproduced interesting projects: testing soil, identify-ing plant parts and raising worms in science; writingcomputer programs to track calories, rain fall and plantgrowth; considering the effect of plants on civiliza-tions and the impact of climate zones in social stud-ies. In English class students read What’s in a Ham-burger? and Plants That Changed the World. For a“run off the carrot” exercise, students had to grow anitem, measure the amount of calories it takes to run itoff in P.E. class, then literally run it off. “They got tosee what a calorie really means,” Haskvitz says.

His students also have learned firsthand how toget legislation passed. After planting and maintaininga drought-tolerant garden, they were dismayed thatothers didn’t care about xeriscaping. So they wrote abill, persuaded a local legislator to carry it, soughthelp from a political action committee, had lobbyinglessons from a pro, saved their money, and flew toSacramento for a state senate session. “They gave thesenators a quiz on plants,” Haskvitz says proudly, andthe legislation—requiring state-funded buildings touse xeriscape landscaping or have a good reason whynot—passed.

Says Haskvitz: “The garden is a tool for learn-ing, a means to an end. It’s not really costly. It ties inwith the curriculum. You can satisfy community ser-vice requirements. And it teaches patience—that’s thebest thing about gardening.”

In University City, a close-in suburb of St. Louis,a parent-initiated and parent-run program at FlynnPark Elementary School has garnered kudos nation-ally and is being duplicated, at least in part, at thedistrict’s five other K-5 schools. During a plantingweek in the spring, each child in the 400-studentschool plants a square foot in Flynn Park’s organicvegetable garden. Before school is out in June theharvest becomes a huge fresh salad shared by all. Sincea class has about 20 children, Linda Wiggen Kraft,the parent-volunteer who organizes the project, de-vised a layout with 3 by 8 foot plots for each class,and then she designed square-foot Mylar® templateswith just the right size and number of holes for eachof 10 cool-weather crops that work in the Zone 6 cli-mate and mature before summer vacation. Each childchooses what to plant in his or her space.

“A lot of teachers have a model of how to teachindoors,” says Kraft, a landscape designer, “but to takethe kids outdoors, that’s often scary. We had to showthem how to do it. And because it’s not required bythe curriculum, we made it as easy as possible.” Teach-ers can individually tailor classroom activities to what

“The garden is

a tool for

learning,

a means to

an end.

It’s not really

costly. It ties in

with the

curriculum.

You can satisfy

community

service

requirements.

And it teaches

patience—

that’s the best

thing about

gardening.”


their students are seeing in the garden at a given time.The first spring, 1996, four parents helped each classduring its turn to plant. “We needed lots of volun-teers, which was hard to coordinate,” she says. Thefollowing year an enthusiastic teacher had her fourthand fifth graders “apply” and train as helpers.

“The kids are very creative,” says Kraft. “We di-vide a class into small groups outdoors and a helper isassigned to each. They read stories, learn about veg-etables, look at various seeds, and the helpers cameup with garden-related games.” And the seeds getplanted without trampling.

Kraft and her parent volunteers are sold on theexperience, which, she says, “can’t be duplicated in-side.” Nor does she think environmental education—learning about the rain forest, for instance—is usu-ally relevant. “Here the kids are in their own environ-ment. They see a cycle from seed to harvest. Theycome out and weed and water and see the growth. It’srelevant to them.”

In summer, community gardeners rent the plotsin Flynn Park’s garden for a nominal fee, thereby solv-ing a thorny problem for many schools. One bonus:When the children return, there’s almost always some-thing left for them to glean.

At Orca at Columbia School, a K-6, ethnicallymixed Seattle public school, the garden also began,in 1991, with parent initiative through a matching grantfrom the Department of Neighborhoods, funds from

other city departments and a neighborhood develop-ment group, and community efforts. To create the gar-den entailed removing 4,000 square feet of asphalt. Agreenhouse, supported by the parents’ association,“with our mild climate really expands the growingseason to year round,” says Anza Muenchow, theformer coordinator. Muenchow, now head of KingCounty’s Master Gardener Program, began as a par-ent volunteer, then came on board as part-timegarden overseer. She spent a lot of time readying thephysical space and then fleshing out the program andorganizing volunteers. She also spent time raisingmoney. The school now sells, on the Saturday beforeMother’s Day, vegetable, flower and herb plants thatstudents start from seed.

Most of the 300 children work in the gardenweekly, often with a parent volunteer, in groups of sixto 10. Two coordinators, reports Alan Moores, “helpthe teachers develop ongoing garden curriculum, guidethe volunteers who work with the students, and workdirectly with certain classes in the garden ourselvesevery week.” Each class has a parent-garden liaison.Some teachers integrate the garden into their class-room studies; others use it as enrichment. Muenchownotes, “We shied away from using the garden as areward or a punishment or a place for a substitute tosend kids. Every kid gets a chance to be in the gar-den.” The master gardener program supports Orca withvolunteers, training for parents, and materials.

Gardens, says artist-community organizer Julie Stone, can encom-pass more than growing food and flowers. They can express acommunity’s values or history or feelings, and through art in variedforms, she finds many ways to do just that in school and communitygardens. “When I work with a group doing a schoolyard, I listen forclues to build a cultural component into the space,” says Stone, a pho-tographer and ceramicist.

Art in the garden can be a one-day, hands-on informal communityactivity; permanent public art, such as a piece commissioned from aprofessional artist; or participatory art that is transformed into apermanent installation. “Art can be a translator or facilitator for inte-gral aspects of the curriculum,” she suggests, “whether it’s science orsocial studies or English. You can start with a theme, for examplerecycling, and do a one-day expression that’s not permanent. Or youcan do a series of performances or have educational or cultural eventsthat happen in the schoolyard or are tied to it.”

At one Boston school, Stone’s task was to bring together theschool population—teachers, students and administrators—and com-munity representatives to design a new schoolyard with a landscapearchitect. Foundation money was available to do and to maintain somepublic art. The school wanted to include each child directly and alsowanted the community involved, so she devised a scheme to do asimple project that could involve different age groups and be trans-formed into permanent art. With a theme of “Earth, Air, Fire, Water”

children drew “wonderful dinosaurs and birds and fish” in art class.The drawings were traced onto cardboard, fabricated in metal by aprofessional, and welded to a new fence around the space. “It’schildren’s art,” says Stone, “but made permanent by a professional, soit has a level of integrity for the community.”

In a one-day event, community members made press molds ofshells, leaves and other items that were later used to make fired andglazed tiles for the pathways and benches. Pressing vegetables, fruits,leaves and flowers into freshly poured cement to leave an impressionon pathways, patios and walls is a another great way, she notes, toadd “a subtle and gorgeous” touch to school and community gardensand also can be educational.

With a sixth grade social studies class Stone made a tile mural.The class learned about vegetables from Extension Service agents,learned to do ceramics, and watched the garden being constructed. “Wedid a grid to scale and laid it out on the classroom floor, and they hadto figure out how many tiles would fit.” Stone fired the tiles herself.“It’s right on the outside of a community garden and is a link betweenthe school and its young people and the garden.” After six years, not ahint of graffiti has appeared.

Says Stone: “All of it really is a catalyst to build community andbridge cultural differences that can be sustained—because there’s asense of self-expression.”

For more on art in the garden, read about Philadelphia artist Lily Yeh, page 24.

CONNECTING ART AND ENVIRONMENT

“Here the kids

are in their

own

environment.

They see a cycle

from seed to

harvest.

They come out

and weed and

water and see

the growth.

It’s relevant

to them.”


One innovation Orca offers is a six-week gardenelective for fourth, fifth and sixth graders that com-bines plant propagation, use of tools and business-related skills and supports the annual plant sale. Stu-dents have grown a “tostado” garden replete with driedcorn, dried beans, tomatoes and onions, in which “notmuch is ready to harvest until fall,” Muenchow says.Last summer, Moores’ colleague, Amanda Leisle,swapped maintenance duties for growing space andtwo local youth groups also used the garden. Volun-teers watered weekly. Says Moores: “We were able tomake a fairly seamless transition from summer to fall,even harvesting enough produce from Amanda’s gar-den, and other class gardens, to make lots of greatfood for our annual Harvest Day.”

Finding More Resources

For school garden pioneers, a host of books andcurriculum materials are available to help guide theirprogram development. Digging Deeper, produced inpartnership with ACGA (see review page 18), andSuccess in the Garden by former ACGA Board mem-ber Lucy Bradley (see review page 17) are two of thenewer resources. Life Lab Science Program, a popu-lar, 20-year-old group that specializes in outdoorschool gardens, offers award-winning curriculum: LifeLab Science for K-5 and The Growing Classroom, asupplemental guide with activities. Based in Califor-nia, Life Lab works with more than 1,000 schoolsacross the country, offers workshops and individual-ized program design, and has published a thoroughguide to creating an outdoor classroom.

The National Gardening Association, in additionto its coveted youth grants, sells GrowLabs in severalsizes with a guide to indoor gardening. Multi-disci-plinary, inquiry-based curriculum and activities for K-8 and a teacher’s guide with plans to build your owngrow lab can be ordered separately. Growing Ideas, athree-times a year newsletter, features theme-basedactivities, resources and teaching strategies, and an e-mail network connects kids and classrooms.

With the help of a large advisory panel of spe-cialists in various fields, the American HorticulturalSociety plans an annual symposium covering numer-ous aspects of gardening with children and youth thatis held in different regions each year. Coming up July22-24 at Denver Botanic Garden is the seventh sucheducational event that offers information about de-sign, curriculum, resources, new ideas and contacts.

Growing Power, a Madison-based nonprofit com-munity garden land trust organization with a varietyof projects, has formed the Children’s Garden Net-work to share support and resources, develop grantopportunities, and work collaboratively. “We’ve foundwe share many of the same goals and challenges,” saysfounder Hope Finkelstein, “but when you’re involvedin your own project, it’s very hard to reach out—

especially workingwith kids in an out-door setting, whichis a challenge.”Growing Powerwas able to get agrant to pay uni-versity interns lastsummer. “Offeringpay was reallygood,” Finkelsteinsays. “We had lotsof application and itsolved one of thebiggest challenges,labor over the sum-mer.”

The SouthwestRegion Communityand School/YouthGardening Confer-ence in Phoenix,Arizona, is fast be-coming a must-attend Februaryevent for those in-volved in school gardening. Sponsored by the Uni-versity of Arizona Maricopa County Cooperative Ex-tension, the conference features a number of semi-nars and site visits, and honors school and commu-nity gardeners in the region.

A network of school garden enthusiasts ex-changes information and ideas through the Internet.To subscribe to the list, send e-mail to [email protected] with “help” as the subject oror go to https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo.

Assessing the Impact

A critical element in developing and sustaining aschool garden program is its ability to educate stu-dents. “In this era of accountability we have to be ableto show that a school garden is making a differencefor students in the classroom,” says Tom Tyler, presi-dent of ACGA and Extension Agent for Environmen-tal Horticulture in Arlington, Virginia. Once a gardenis in the ground, does it matter? “In my opinion, mov-ing a teacher or volunteer beyond growing a cutemarigold for mom is one of the biggest challenges.Documenting the value of this activity, and others,will lead to greater buy-in from everyone associatedwith the educational community,” says Tyler.

School administrators, teachers and funders wanttangible results, not just anecdotal information any-more. Solid research that shows benefits—better testscores or enhanced skills—can justify funding and in-clusion as an integral part of curriculum.

Research is difficult to design to achieve good

Students at StevensElementary School in St.Louis are happily plantingin the Marcus GarveyCommunity Garden acrossthe road.

Gate

way

Gre

enin

g


results and is time-consuming to carryout. Some studies as-sessing environmentaleducation overlap withhorticulture, but un-derstanding the exist-ing environment is notthe same as actively“nurturing the planet,”notes Virginia Poly-technic Institute andState University Asso-ciate Professor of Hor-ticulture Diane Relf,also chair of thePeople-Plant Council.“When students areput in the position oftaking care of life,their personal commit-ment and involvementis at a different level.There’s a need to ex-pand the research.”

Laurie DeMarco,Relf’s former graduate student, found in a search ofthe literature only one study that used pre- and post-testing to measure the effects of gardening at a school.University of South Carolina researcher BarbaraSheffield compared two classes, one that used a gar-den, the other that covered the same material in theclassroom. On two tests, one academic and the otheron self-esteem, the garden-users had higher scores.The study offers a model for research, DeMarco said.Her own work asked what makes a school gardenwork. From a national survey of NGA grant winners,DeMarco found three factors necessary for success:personal investment by the teachers and others in-volved; the availability of resources including fund-ing and equipment; and teachers’ knowledge. Lessclear was whether availability of volunteers wascritical.

Personal investment, DeMarco noted, needs toinclude the support of the principal and administra-tors who can facilitate resources such as hooking upto water and paying for books. It also means the gar-den should be integral to the curriculum and involvestudent-led inquiry. “Teachers taking a chance to usea garden are exactly those who like to explore, to dealwith questions the kids ask and that they may not beable to answer,” she says. And students should have asense of ownership.

Teachers indicated that they rely more on theirgardening rather than science knowledge, which“leaves out a lot of teachers who are not gardeners.”Outdoor labs, demonstration gardens, and workshops

are important. “Even when plants fail,” DeMarco says,“it’s still a learning experience. It’s problem solving.Teachers need to see what they can do.”

Virginia Tech graduate student Catherine P.McGuinn has reported great success with six low-income, at-risk boys she worked with in 1998 atBlacksburg Independence School, an alternativeschool for behaviorally disordered youths in twocounty districts. McGuinn’s students, ages 14 to 16,were on probation from the juvenile courts, at leasttwo years behind in school, and had been expelled orsuspended. After a semester of vocational horticul-ture, with talk about careers, all six had summer hor-ticultural jobs, two in internships that McGuinn hadarranged with the town grounds crew and for whichthey had to apply.

McGuinn arranged for volunteers so the boys hadone-on-one help in class and made sure they prac-ticed interviewing and wrote résumés. “One boy cameto me privately,” she relates, “and asked me to helphim get a job with the university grounds maintenancecrew. I helped him fill out an application and sched-ule an interview.” He got the job, and the other threewere hired by local landscapers. McGuinn, who moni-tored the boys’ behavior and attendance, says the ini-tial analysis indicates improvement. She is doing asix-month follow-up. Says Relf: “The turn-around inthese boys is a major, major accomplishment.”

Researchers in San Antonio recently reported ona three-year study of Bexar County’s Master GardenerClassroom Garden Project that considered whetherparticipation would increase a student’s self-esteemscores and improve classroom behavior, attendanceand grades. Professor Jacquelyn Alexander of OurLady of the Lake University and Debbie Hendren ofSouthwest Texas State University, with support fromthe Bexar County Extension Service, found overallthat “the students demonstrated improved relationshipswith peers, parents, and themselves.” Although theevidence was not conclusive, it did indicate that self-esteem was enhanced, and that, in turn, may be re-lated to better classroom behavior, better attendanceand better grades. Other researchers at Texas A&Mare currently comparing the effects of gardens at dif-ferent schools.

A State Education and Environmental RoundtableStudy, “Closing the Achievement Gap: Using the En-vironment as a Context for Learning,” looked at 40schools incorporating some form of environmentaleducation, including some schools involved in gar-dening or habitats. Evidence “indicates that studentslearn more effectively within an environment-basedcontext than within a traditional educational frame-work,” the study notes, and cited “visits, interviews,survey results, and gains on both standardized testscores and GPAs.” Copies are available through thegroup’s Web site at www.seer.org.

A student andcommunity gardener

harvest together.For many children,

experiences in a schoolgarden are fascinating:They learn that carrots

don’t grow at thesupermarket!

Gate

way

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Our research shows that school gardensare once again a feature of the American educationallandscape. Imaginative teachers are using vegetable,flower, butterfly, wildlife and native-plant gardens ina variety of ways to teach science, math and nutritionconcepts. Others use gardens for literature and socialstudies, journal writing, art projects, economics, bi-ology and ecology. Most of the gardens are at, or usedby, elementary schools, where gardening fits mosteasily into the curriculum and mandated standards oflearning and where the largest assortment of teachingmaterials is available. Those at high schools are usu-ally part of a vocational horticulture program.

A formula for success with a school garden isnot handy. Principals who support gardening andteachers who use gardens are reassigned to otherschools or retire. Many teachers are neither interestednor knowledgeable about gardening, and others areuncomfortable teaching “off the cuff” outside. Teachertraining is not widespread. Some cities, Los Angeles,for example, have a highly developed and trained net-work of volunteers who help with all the aspects ofstarting and maintaining a garden. Other areas offerlimited formal technical support and resources. Fund-ing for gardens is very uneven: an Edible Schoolyardis possible thanks to a major benefactor, while otherteachers scrabble for plant money and just want tokeep the principal from declaring their gardens aneyesore. What works at one school for one teachermay not be replicable.

On the plus side, more and more excellent gar-den-based materials and conferences are available, andnetworks such as Hope Finkelstein’s Growing Power,Martin Kemple’s and Joseph Kiefer’s Food Works,and Lucy Bradley’s Internet list offer ways for schoolgardeners to connect and share experiences.

Gardens have often been started by one interestedteacher or parent. These efforts sometimes take offand expand; others continue to be individual, albeitschool-sanctioned, enterprises. Teachers are frequentlyobliged to find money to support a garden throughgrants and fund raising. Sources include the NationalGardening Association, the school district, local andnational foundations, government agencies, parent-teacher groups, and the sale of produce and plants.Teachers have forged successful partnerships withparent and community organizations, government di-visions (parks and solid waste units), and businesses.Some superintendents, seeing the success of a gardenat one school, are writing gardening into their districtbudgets and implementing programs at more schools.

A dearth of good research on school gardensmakes it difficult for advocates to demonstrate theadvantages of programs and to readily justify fund-ing. As researchers begin to devise more projects toassess the burgeoning number of school gardens inCalifornia and elsewhere, evidence will reveal the

exact nature of the benefits to students that observa-tion and anecdotal reports by teachers who gardencurrently project. Until then, individual comments andresearch indicate these keys to success for school gar-dens.

• School administrators—principals andboards of education—must support the garden.

• Teachers and garden volunteers must betrained in gardening and project management andmust be personally invested.

• Resources must be forthcoming.• The garden should be integrated into the

curriculum and provide student-led inquiry.• Community members should be involved in

all phases of the project.• Begin small and keep gardening fun.

Clearly, gardens are making their mark in theschool world. Stories abound of the richness they bringto children and the adults who help them on the pathof discovery. Those who are tilling in the schoolyardare open, generous and delighted to share. Schoolgardening currently enjoys wide support and has beenincluded in the national science standards.

More work, of course, remains. Gardening hasyet to be integrated into the curriculum in manyschools. Educators need appropriate training. The im-pact and outcomes of school gardens need effectivedocumentation through well-designed research strat-egies. Networking, advocacy and collaboration bythose committed to school gardens must be better de-veloped and orchestrated to lead the way. Still, thepossibility of “a garden in every school” is on thehorizon.

Dig in. It’s hard work.

SCHOOL GARDENING RESOURCES

American Horticultural Society7931 E. Boulevard DriveAlexandria, VA 22308Phone: 703/768-8700Web: www.ahs.org (home page); ahs.org/ nonmembers/symposium.htm(information about the Youth GardeningSymposium)

Boston Schoolyard Funders CollaborativeKirk Meyer, Directorc/o Boston FoundationOne Boston Place, 24th floorBoston, MA 02108Phone: 617/723-7415E-Mail: [email protected]

Brooklyn GreenBridge, Brooklyn Botanic GardenEllen Kirby, Director1000 Washington Ave.Brooklyn, NY 11225Phone: 718-622-4433E-Mail: [email protected]

California “Garden in Every School”Deborah Tamannaie, Nutrition EducationConsultant and Coordinator of GIESCalifornia Department of EducationNutrition Education and Training Program721 Capitol Mall, P.O. Box 944272Sacramento, CA 94244Phone: 916/323-2473E-Mail: [email protected](very useful information packet)


Food WorksJoseph Kiefer, Executive Director64 Main St., Montpelier, VT 05602Phone: 802/223-1515E-Mail: [email protected]

Gateway GreeningKathy Bosin, Program DirectorP.O. Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166Phone: 314/577-9484E-Mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

GreenThumbLinda Huntington, Education CoordinatorDepartment of Parks and RecreationThe Arsenal, Central Park, New York, NY 10021Phone: 212/788-8073

Growing Power, Inc.Hope Finkelstein, Executive Director229 Merry St., Madison, WI 53704Phone: 608/242-7196E-Mail: [email protected]

Linda Wiggin KraftOrganizer, Flynn Park School Program7275 Creveling, St. Louis, MO 63130Phone: 314/863-1136

Life Lab Science Program1156 High St., Santa Cruz, CA 95064Phone: 408/459-2001E-Mail: [email protected]: lifelab.ucse.edu

Los Angeles Gardening AngelsUniversity of California Division of Agricultural SciencesL.A. County Cooperative Extension2 Coral Circle, Monterey Park, CA 91755Phone: 213/838-8330

National Gardening Association180 Flynn Ave.Burlington, VT 05401Phone: 800/538-7476Web: www.garden.org(The National Gardening Association Guide to Kids’ Gardening: AComplete Guide for Teachers, Parents and Youth Leaders, GrowLabmaterials and curriculum, subscriptions to Growing Ideas: A Journal ofGarden-Based Learning, and other gardening supplies)

National Wildlife FederationStephanie Stowell, Schoolyard Habitats Coordinator8925 Leesburg Pike, Vienna, VA 22184Phone: 703/790-4582E-Mail: [email protected]: www.nwf.org/habitats

Trust for Public LandPaula Hewitt, Children’s Programs Director666 Broadway, New York, NY 10012Phone: 212/677-7171E-Mail: [email protected]: www.tpr.org

To order garden/environment teaching materials or researchstudies, check these resources:

Bexar County Master GardenersSpringview Building700 Garcia, San Antonio, TX 78203($12 for copy of full study)

Green Brick Road(nonprofit, resources for teachers/students)c/o 8 Dumas Court, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3A 2N2Phone: 800/473-3638Web: gbr.org/school/resource.htm

Let’s Get Growing(Life Lab materials/others)1900 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz, CA 95065Phone: 800/408-1868E-Mail: [email protected]: www.letsgetgrowing.com

Useful Web Sites:

Classroom activities: www2.garden.org/nga/EDU/Home.html

Environmental Education Link: eelink.net/ee-linkintroduction.html

Georgia Outdoor Classroom Resource Guide:www.mindspring.com/~discoverygardens/occguide/occguide2.html

Alan Haskvitz’s teacher/student resources: everychild.com

Starting a school garden: aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/kindergarden/child/school/step.htm

Texas A&M site with many excellent links to school/youth gardening resources and activities: extension-horticultural.tamu.edu/county/smith/kids.html

Wisconsin Fast Plants: fastplants.cals.wisc.edu

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BOOK REVIEWTeachers ask “How do I get kids excited about

math and science?” Parents want their children to makethe connections about where food comes from. Andmost everyone wants today’s youth to get a handle onlife skills beyond turning on MTV and instant gratifi-cation.

As a major support person for urban horticulturein Maricopa County, Arizona, Lucy Bradley believesgardening is one answer. She’s on the line fieldinglots of requests for help from urban schools that wantto get into gardening. “When students use a yardstickto stake tomatoes and chart their growth over time,they are learning important measurement skills,” saysBradley, an Extension Agent with the University ofArizona Cooperative Extension Service. “It’s a veryeffective way to teach skills because it’s not abstract.”Life skills are hard to teach, but in a garden behaviorhas direct natural consequences, she notes. “If youforget to water, plants die. You learn responsibility,planning and patience.”

“Gardening is discovery, so it’s harder to man-age with a class,” Bradley says. “You have to struc-ture a lesson plan differently. It’s no small thing toimplement, and it takes courage.” To help teachers andothers, she coauthored a reference book, Success withSchool Gardens, with Linda A. Guy, an herb special-ist, and Cathy Cromell, an instructional specialist, andwith the assistance of Phoenix master gardeners withschool experience.

The initiating force for a garden may be one ortwo people, but including a host of folks—teachers,parents, administrators, custodians—is “very impor-tant,” Bradley emphasizes. If not, the burnout rate ishigh. “We hope we’re developing sustainable plans.It’s one thing to garner energy and support to create agarden but keeping energy and interest high to sus-tain it are equally important.” Master gardeners oftenhelp schools, but when requests outnumbered garden-ers—Phoenix has some 90 school districts—she rec-ognized the need for training and a manual that dis-tilled experience for newcomers.

The book addresses three concerns: how to man-age a project with the scope of a school garden, in-cluding funding and administration; how to grow veg-etables in the low desert; and where to find lots moreresources. “We will help with locating a site, we putup information on the Web, and we offer trainingworkshops,” she says, “but we’re really interested inbuilding skills in the community.” The school garden-ing track at the extension service’s summer confer-ence has been filled the past three years, and a newFebruary school gardening conference attracts at least250 people. Bradley has also worked with a nonprofitorganic farm to provide a training program with col-lege credit for teachers.

SUCCESS WITH SCHOOL GARDENS: HOW TOCREATE A LEARNING OASIS IN THEDESERT. Linda A. Guy, Cathy Cromell andLucy K. Bradley. Phoenix: Arizona MasterGardener Press. ISBN 0-9651987-0-7 Pp.$14.95

This concise, easy-to-read guidebookprovides motivating lessons for successfulschool gardening. The subjects range frombasic gardening techniques to tips on cultivat-ing volunteers, supportive parents, teachers,and members of the community to fund rais-ing. The book is loaded with research-basedinformation about garden site selection, gar-den design, soil preparation, plant selection,use of fertilizers, pest management, containergardening and much more.

The techniques have been tested in thelow desert, but could be applied to other areaswhere water conservation is important. The appendixincludes a wealth of resources and technical assistance toaid both novice and experienced garden teachers.

I work with schools in Tucson, Arizona, and use thisbook continuously. I find its clear, readable design hasanswers that are quick and easy to find and that work!

REVIEWED BYJULIE CONRAD,PUEBLO GARDENSELEMENTARY SCHOOL

To order Success with SchoolGardens contact ArizonaMaster Gardener Press,4341 E. Broadway Road,Phoenix, AZ 85040-8807,(602)470-8086 ext. 312;[email protected];or check the Web site:ag.arizona.edu/maricopa/garden/html/pubs/sch-bk.htm

Helping Schools Build Gardens Besides vegetable and flower gardens, wildlifehabitats afford a number of schools a chance for stu-dents to connect with their environment, consideredby researchers to be a significant prerequisite for en-vironmental responsibility. Bradley worked withLowell Elementary School, surrounded by publichousing in central Phoenix, to create such a habitat inthe inner courtyard for its more than 600 children,

many of whom are considered “at risk.” The key tosuccess, she says, is “a direct result of their owner-ship of the project.” Children, teachers, parents andadministrators planned together for a year to designwhat they wanted and to devise how they would usethe habitat. Teachers used vacation time to attend con-ferences on incorporating the habitat into the curricu-lum. The PTA sent the custodian to train as a mastergardener. The children wrote stories and poetry aboutlizards and solved math problems related to landscapedesign. Nothing, including new trees, has beenharmed. Says Bradley: “It has made a huge differ-ence in the ambience of the school.”

“What we learned,” she writes, “was that the moreinvolved the administration, the teachers, the studentsand the parents, the more challenges they overcame,the stronger their commitment and ownership of theproject. We did not go in and give a garden to theschool. We gave them the information and coachingthey needed to create it for themselves.”


BOOK REVIEW

The publication of Digging Deeper could notcome at a better time. The Garden in Every SchoolMovement has renewed interest in school gardening.Teachers, parents and community residents who areinterested in starting school gardens are going to beseeking answers to all kinds of questions. How do

you go about startinga school garden? DoI need anyone’s per-mission? What aboutlesson plans? Whatabout theme gar-dens? What happenswhen school is out?How do I make con-nections with peoplein the community?Digging Deeper sup-plies answers to all ofthese questions andmore.

Joseph Kieferand Martin Semplecall upon their expe-riences creatingschool gardens, cur-ricula, and foodpolicy with their or-ganization, FoodWorks, in Montpe-

lier, Vermont, to put a wealth of information in thereader’s hands. They include case studies written byothers involved in school gardening, from Berkeleyand Denver, to give the added benefit of this practicalinformation. Although, for many, the “how to” chap-ters will be most useful in getting started, I wouldsuggest first reading the last three chapters. Thesechapters make Digging Deeper stand out as a muchmore useful resource than other books on school gar-dening.

The subject of Chapter 8 is the evaluation of yourschool garden project. Thinking about evaluating aprogram before it begins may seem a backward wayof approaching a school garden. Teachers or gardenleaders, however, will often be called upon to justifythe time or money that is being spent on the gardenprogram. School boards, principals or funders willwant some data to show that what they are doing iseffective.

REVIEWED BYLENNY LIBRIZZI,COUNCIL ON THE

ENVIRONMENT OFNEW YORK CITY

DIGGING DEEPER: INTEGRATING YOUTH AND COMMUNITY GARDENS INTO SCHOOLS &COMMUNITIES. Joseph Kiefer and Martin Semple.Montpelier, Vt.: Common Roots Press. ISBN 1-884430-04-X Pp. $19.95

In order to show improvement in reading scores,for example, baseline data is necessary. This exercisewill help to focus on the goals of the program and thedecisions on how to design the program. DiggingDeeper has a number of evaluation forms to copy.These forms include evaluations for the program as awhole, for the students and for tracking plant growth.

Learning about plants and food is an importantfirst step for a child to take in a lifelong learning pro-cess toward a respect and sense of stewardship of na-ture. In Chapters 9 and 10, the authors ask the readerto think beyond the school garden and pose the ques-tion, “Is it enough to create a school garden or is therea bigger picture?” The answer is that there is muchmore that can be done to make connections between aschool gardening program and ecological education,when it is so important to give students the tools theyneed to support the survival of our environment.

With this book, Kiefer and Semple have donea wonderful job of advancing the knowledge aboutthe benefits of school gardening. The most importantcontribution of Digging Deeper, however, is to ad-vance the discussion of how school gardening can playan important role in creating an ecologically sustain-able education system within an ecologically sustain-able society. Read for yourself and become a part ofthis discussion and grass roots effort.

To order Digging Deeper, contact CommonRoots Press, Food Works, 64 Main Street,Montpelier, VT 05602; 800/31

Gardening in the Schoolyard · Gardening in the Schoolyard: It’s a math, social studies, science, reading, art . . . kind of thing By Pamela R. Kirschbaum 18 HOW TO Discouraging

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