This year the National Children and Youth Garden Symposium will be in Denver, Colorado from July 11 to 13. The application for lectures and workshops is already posted. If you’re interested in presenting a great gardening idea that works with kids follow this link: https://americanhort.ahs.org/ncygs
When I was visiting school gardens and school garden advocates in the Bay Area, one of the places I visited was Life Lab in Santa Cruz. Located on the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz, Life Lab is a national leader in the garden-based learning movement. They have an outstanding garden curriculum and offer garden experiences for kids as well as workshops for educators.
Their outreach director, John Fisher, who I met at the National Farm to School Conference this summer, has recently co-authored a book with Whitney Cohen, the education director at Life Lab. It’s titled, The Book of Gardening Projects for Kids: 101 ways to get kids outside, dirty, and having fun. The book is aimed at parents and, as billed, is filled with ways to get kids outside in the garden and having fun. While it covers the basics like how to plan and build and maintain a garden, including various kid-themed gardens, it is more about gardens as spaces where kids will want to play, hang out, and just by being there, learning about the natural world. Many of the gardens pictured in the book have me thinking about redoing some of my own outdoor spaces, and my kids are grown up!
It’s obvious that the authors know kids as well as they know gardening. What child wouldn’t want to race sow bugs, build fairy houses or make sculptures out of mud? That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of learning that will go on while following these activities as well. This book would be a great resource for teachers of in-school or after school garden classes as well, which is probably how I will use it the most.
As a final note, I loved the sidebar story of Katie Stagliano. When Katie was in the third grade, she was given a tiny cabbage seedling at school that she planted in her backyard. The resulting cabbage weighed out at over 40 pounds when it was time to harvest it! Katie and her family decided to donate it to the local soup kitchen and then ended up staying to help serve the soup it went into. Katie was inspired by this experience and has gone on to oversee multiple gardens that serve the soup kitchen…to the tune of 2,000 pounds of produce a year! You never know what the interest piqued in growing a single seedling will lead to. You can learn more about Katie at: katieskrops.com.
I had a great week in the Bay Area visiting school gardens. I began by meeting with Rachel Pringle of Education Outside (http://www.educationoutside.org) and co-author of “How to Grow a School Garden” in San Francisco. Education Outside is working with the San Francisco School District to green the school yards in the city. The city recently passed a bond issue to pay for this work and besides helping plan the outdoor areas, Education Outside is training educators in how to integrate these outdoor learning spaces into the curriculum. I visited several of the gardens that are in use already and was impressed by their beauty as well as their design that encourages their use as outdoor learning spaces.
I also visited the Edible Schoolyard (edibleschoolyard.org) in Berkeley. The garden has so many wonderful hang-out spaces and kids were using them. An after-school class was in session while i was there and kids were cooking in a large outdoor pizza oven. I loved that ducks and chickens were roaming free throughout the garden and the the students I saw seemed to be excited by the birds as well. It is a huge space with fruit trees, arbors, berries and lots of vegetable beds. I have to admit that I then walked the half mile or so up to Chez Panisse and that I had a memorable meal there!
My last stop was Santa Cruz where I visited Life Lab (lifelab.org) and several of the gardens they have designed at local schools. The Life Lab learning garden had a class in session while I was there and the students were obviously engaged and having fun. Life Lab is a national leader in farm and garden-based education that promotes experiential learning for all ages through children’s camps, field trips, internships and teacher workshops. It was so peaceful being in the garden there that it was hard to leave. It sits by itself on a hill outside of town on the University of California at Santa Cruz campus. From parts of the garden you can see out to the Pacific Ocean.
What impressed me most about the gardens I visited was their size and the incorporation of kid-friendly hang out areas. They begged you to want to be in them and most were large enough that you you felt separate from the busy world of school or city. A lot of the gardens also had cool art work. The other thing I couldn’t get over coming from further north where we have some cold were all the outdoor sinks I saw. In fact I think all the gardens I visited had at least one outdoor sink. Obviously they don’t get the freezing temperatures we experience in Seattle. After the nice sunshine and warmth I had, I have to admit it was a bit hard to get back on the plane that took me home!
My neighborhood school garden celebrated its first harvest this week! They had music, a scavenger hunt and other fun activities along with tastes from the garden and fresh pressed cider. I was delighted to have been invited to read from Our School Garden!
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- Lots of vegetables in the raised beds.
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- Music in the garden.
After two days of clouds it was wonderful to have the sun come out about an hour before the gathering and to stay out the entire time. They grew an amazing crop of tomatoes and even have both white and purple eggplants that bore fruit. Our garden season was helped by our second warm and sunny September in a row. Congratulation, Greenwood!
In 1918, when the Seattle School District was an enthusiastic participant in the United States School Garden Army Program, Lincoln High School wintered over 20,000 cabbage plants in this greenhouse that they distributed to schools with gardens in the spring. Back then, the school district had a full time school garden educator at the school district offices who coordinated gardens throughout the district. The district purchased 30,000 pounds of seed potatoes for use by students and 10,000 packets of seeds. In 1919 students produced $100,000 worth of fruits and vegetables which, adjusted for inflation, would be $1,300,000 worth of produce in 2012. Some of the gardens were huge–the Emerson School Garden, for instance, was a half acre in size. The superintendent at the time, Frank Cooper, was a supporter of hands-on learning and said gardening was important because, “the child studies THINGS…not through the eyes of the textbooks, but through his own.”
Now Lincoln is once again getting a school garden. Lowell APP @ Lincoln is building both a vegetable garden and a native garden. Two weeks ago they built two enormous raised beds. To read more about their efforts and to see pictures of the garden check out their web site at: http://snappdragons.wordpress.com Now we just need the green house to be fixed up!
Lincoln School greenhouse in Seattle.
Saturday, my wife, Carlyn, and I volunteered at Marra Farm as part of Bowdoin College’s Common Good Day, where we’re alumni. We spent 3 hours weeding the raspberry patch and have the scratches to show for it. Carlyn picked up a nice wasp sting as well. There was a beautiful paper wasp nest attached to some of the raspberry canes that we noticed after she was stung.
Marra Farm is in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle and is part of Seattle Parks. It was a woking farm (owned by the Marra family) from the 1880’s until the 1970’s, when the city purchased it. It’s over 4 acres and is worked by several different groups: a neighborhood P-Patch, a Mien community garden, a children’s garden utilized by Concord Elementary School, and an acre of garden tended by Lettuce Link volunteers that provides food for local food banks. T
he garden coordinator, Sue, said that 22,000 pounds of food was grown on that acre of land last year, all by volunteers like us.
Working outside in a garden on a beautiful September day was as good as it gets. I certainly had no sense I was in the city. The students at Concord School are lucky to have such an amazing resource down the street. The program is described as: “The children walk to the farm, garden in their own plots, taste and cook fresh vegetables, and learn about their environment through scientific exploration and outdoor-themed games. At the end of the class series, children take home their harvests to share with their families.”
I will be doing a presentation about school gardens at the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe, WA this Sunday, August 26 at 2 P.M. It sounds like it will take place just inside the main entrance to the fairgrounds. It’s sponsored by Snohomish County Agriculture who are featuring school gardens at the fair this year!
Then on Thursday, August 30, I’ll be at Secret Garden Books in Seattle (http://www.secretgardenbooks.com) at 7 PM where I’ll talk about the history of school gardens in Seattle and read from my book. Hope to see you there!
Our School Garden! has a curriculum guide. You can find it under the Our School Garden! link at the top of this page (if you’re reading this on Facebook, go to rickswann.com first). It has suggested activities for elementary school students for all the poems in the book. It also has suggested readings of other books, like Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens, that also support school garden lessons. Keep checking back to this site as I will continue to fine tune and add to it.
I’m back from Burlington, VT where I attended the National School to Cafeteria conference, Digging In! The conference was wonderful and flavorful as well. Some high points were the slew of inspirational speakers: Anupama Joshi, Senator Bernie Sanders, Diane Imbre, Gail Christopher, Chellie Pingree, and Debra Eschmeyer, to name a few. I got jazzed by the workshop given by the Slow Food Denver See-to-Table folks (http://www.sfdseedtotable.org), Gigia Kolouch and Andrew Nowak, on Learner Driven Cooking Classes. The trip out to Shelburne Farms on Friday night was spectacular. Shelburne Farms has an array of educational programs (http://www.shelburnefarms.org/educationprograms/index.shtml) as well as an amazing infrastructure. On the grounds were the two largest barns I have ever seen in my entire life! With mountains to both the west and the east at sunset, and fields that stretch for miles in every direction, it was a memorable evening, not to mention a great meal provided by numerous cooking programs showcasing their abilities. I also loved meeting artist Bonnie Acker. I added some carrots to one of the six group created panels made on Saturday by conference attendees. I plan to write more at length on issues raised at the conference and about programs I became acquainted with at the conference in the future!
Art panel created under the direction of Bonnie Acker.
I will be attending the 6th National Farm to Cafeteria Conference this week end in Burlington, VT. I will be signing my book Our School Garden! on Friday night at Shelburne Farms and have a poster session on recommended children’s books for garden educators on Saturday. I’m looking forward to what looks like the best food I’ve ever had at a conference. I’m looking forward to it!
Rick Swann 