Hi, I’m Emily. My story is that my grandma asked me to help her plant some tomato sprouts, as I guess you would call them, and we put them in the ground . I couldn’t keep my hands out of the dirt and it was very releasing. I could think.
- Story from Emily Ullman
I am the Gardening Coordinator for one of the only operating one-room schoolhouses left in the state of California. We are located in San Diego County, in a community known for it’s apple trees and daffodils. All 32 kids in our school, from grades K through 7, pair up with each other to keep our 6 raised beds and native plants garden blooming and fruiting throughout the year! We’ve just started growing flower seeds in our small greenhouse to use in landscaping the front of our school, as well as a potato crop that in the fall the returning students can dig. Our salad greens, strawberries, kale, and peas are almost ready to harvest.
We’ve grown many things over the years, from popcorn and tomatoes to edible flowers and our own wheat crop! We keep a small community of worms in our worm composter, which the students feed with their lunch leftovers. However, the favorite gardening activity by far is composting all our cafeteria scraps and turning them into soil – the kids just love all the critters they find! We are hoping to raise enough money this year to build a grape arbor for our wild grapes and create an outdoor classroom space from it.
- Story from Cristi Lewis
My first grade class began the year learning about plants during our science block. We started an indoor grow lab and the children were incredibly inspired to create a much bigger garden. They began to notice gardens, plants, and trees in their natural environment. As a class we decided to move our garden project outdoors, where with help from community members and support from our principal, we made a much larger vegetable garden.
Our garden was designed to grow healthy herbs and veggies for the students to eat. I wanted to include nutrition and health standards into each lesson so that the children understood that by eating from their garden they were making healthy food choices. We planted squash, pumpkins, lettuce of all varieties, carrots, broccoli, beets, cabbage, basil, thyme, rosemary, and onions such as yellow, chive, and scallions.
The students had previously voted on what they wanted to grow (insert a little lesson on the benefits of living in a democracy and their right as an American to vote) and researched (first grade technology standard) what was possible to grow that time of year. They contacted local farmers and asked for suggestions. They also thought about what veggies made for great recipes in anticipation of their harvest. Our special garden was a huge success. The students learned about organic farming, sustainability, and how to grow their very own healthy food source.
The garden unit grew even bigger when our veggies began to sustain a newly acquired “free range” chicken coop and the three hens living in it! The children raised funds to purchase a coop by having their very own lemonade stand. They became entrepreneurs as well as gardeners. Our hens were named after three strong women in history; Ruby for Ruby Bridges, Mae for Mae Jemison, and Maya for Maya Angelou. Ruby, Mae and Maya also enjoyed our delicious veggies. Our food waste was either given to the hens or placed in the classroom compost bin. The compost was created with the help of red wigglers to create healthy soil for our next garden project. And the cycle continues….
As the venture developed, the students began to connect more with our planet realizing that their actions had a direct effect on what happened to the soil, the air, and their natural environment. This simple gardening project has changed the students into “Green Leaders.” Each child had a new sense of purpose. They no longer litter the schoolyard and take pride in it’s appearance. The “Green Leaders” began to campaign for a food waste reduction program school wide titled: Tap & Stack. In addition, A school-wide recycling program was also created by my class. It’s amazing what has “organically” transpired over the course of the last few months and to think it all started with some simple Brassica seeds.
- Story from Melissa Tranchida, First Grade Teacher, Memminger School of Global Studies
Our school has just received a grant to help fund a hoop house for our school campus! As a second grade teacher, I am so excited for our students to learn about caring for and harvesting healthy foods. We will also be composting to help “feed” our garden!
- Story from Jamie Harrington
My children and I participate in a community garden near my work, as well as starting some container gardens on our patio at our apartment. We also get together with another family, with children about the same ages as my children, and we do gardening projects and harvest together. We visit farmers markets and select produce from there. Just this morning my kids and I were prepping and tilling with other members of our garden community. It is such a great experience, and I am glad to share it with my children.
- Story from Amy Younkin
I just moved to Springfield a year ago while my new neighbors were putting in a community garden right across the street. That’s how I got to know all the cool kids in my neighborhood. Well, that and the fact that I have a very, very large dog that needs to give kisses to anyone his height. We’ve made good friends in the past year, planting berries, picking lettuce, weeding beds and howling at the moon. Having a garden is an excellent way to meet people and make dinner! This weekend brings chickens. Oh girl! What will the neighbor’s think? Breakfast just got better on my block.
Love, Leda, Sailor the Dog, and Brums the Cat
Camptonville Elementary School has had a school garden since 1996, and when the early childhood program, 123 Grow, began on the school campus in 2003, staff and parents became involved and now the two programs share the garden space. We live in the Sierra Nevada foothills, at 3,000 feet elevation, where heavy snow is common each winter. One of our biggest challenges is that we get such a late start each spring, with the last frost date falling in mid-May. However, the hot temperatures of summer make it possible for the garden to be laden with good food by the time students return from summer vacation. We also partnered with the Sacramento Tree Foundation last fall and added about a dozen fruit-bearing trees, scattered around campus, to widen the food we are growing right here on campus. It is all served for 123 Grow snack, and school breakfasts, snacks and lunches.
- Story from Birdsong Sundstrom
Dear Annie’s Root 4 Kids,
Our school is a green school and we have been planting vigorously in our garden, but we need new garden supplies in order to continue expanding our plant diversity. The veggies we could grow would go into our school lunches. We have also recieved new hot lunch plates that are plastic so we don’t have to use foam shipped from Philadelphia. We also have a worm bin and a compost bin.
-Story from Raina Corbly
This Spring we completed this “egg-citing” activity in our kinder class. After collecting dozens of carefully opened egg shells, we drew faces on the shells and filled them with moisten seedling mix. On top of that we planted some annual rye grass seeds. In just a few days the seeds sprouted and we displayed our egg families on top of upside down egg cartons. The children loved the project, especially when the time came for giving our eggheads haircuts!
The best eggshells were the ones with just the tops opened. I found that hitting the tip of the shell in the counter, then peeling the shell off the top and shaking the egg out produced the best shell to use. This meants scrambled eggs or brownies. It was hard not to break the egg.
-Story from Kel Youngs
Our school garden is very popular with our students. We are finding that if the kids grow it, they are likely to eat it, too. Besides eating and foraging through the garden, we will attempt to grow salad greens for our cafeteria salad bar. Here in the inner city, hot sauce is popular, and you should have seen the kids eat when we renamed cress to “Hot Sauce Lettuce.”
This just happened as I was typing at my desk: a middle school student just came in reaching in her pocket for money to buy some seeds to plant at her home. Since we are seed-savers, no money needed.
