A Growing Trend: School gardens plant the seeds of greater understanding
By:
Carol Brydolf
It was an idyllic spring morning at the Fruit Ridge Elementary School community garden in south Sacramento. Excited kindergartners, seeds in hand, kneeled among the sugar peas, lettuce, and brilliant purple chard, eager to plant their first bean crop. The children had already prepared the planting beds, digging compost and mulch into the soil.
But one little girl looked apprehensive. “I’m scared to touch the dirt,” the child said softly to school garden coordinator Lanae Davis. “I’m afraid to push the seed in.”
Davis gently suggested the girl take off her gloves. “She was tentative, at first, but eventually she dug her fingers into the rich warm soil,” Davis says. “It felt good. Suddenly, planting beans became a fun experience, not a scary one.”
It’s moments like these that convince Davis she did the right thing five years ago in volunteering to help establish a school garden, even though her day job as school librarian keeps her plenty busy. It’s worth the extra effort, Davis says, because she loves to help children get down and dirty for a good cause: connecting with nature and learning to help things grow.
At least twice a month, these kindergartners will return to monitor, weed and water their new crop. Each class at Fruit Ridge, and at the Language Academy of Sacramento charter school located on the Fruit Ridge campus, has its own plot, and students are free to visit the garden at the edge of the school playing fields during their free time. A dedicated core of volunteer parents and community members keep the garden going on weekends and school holidays, but Davis wishes she had funds to hire a part-time garden coordinator.
Urban oasis
Many children who live in the economically depressed neighborhood adjacent to campus don’t have backyards or gardens. As demand for new housing and rising property values increase pressure to subdivide agricultural land, fewer and fewer California children—especially those from big cities—get the chance to visit a
working farm.
“Some of our students think their food comes from the back of the supermarket,” says parent volunteer Glayol Sahba who is co-coordinator of the garden. Sahba is so convinced that children benefit from exposure to nature that she has volunteered hundreds of hours working with school staff and community gardeners to get the garden up and running.
“We have kindergartners who have never touched a pill bug or a lady bug,” she says. “Here they get to see the entire life cycle of insects and plants. They see how their food is grown, they prepare and eat food they’ve grown themselves, and they can relate what they see in the market to what’s served on their plates.”
With a shoestring budget that varies between $2,500 and $5,000 a year, neither Fruit Ridge nor Language Arts can afford to hire even a part-time gardener to coordinate volunteers, keep an eye on the site during summers and school vacation and oversee the complex operation.
Nonetheless, student gardeners grow an impressive array of crops. Teachers from both schools say they use the garden as a teaching resource, creating a garden curriculum that carefully integrates state standards for science, biology, history, social studies and even visual and language arts. Much of the horticulture is directly related to the children’s social studies: Fava beans nourished ancient civilizations; corn, beans and squash—“the three sisters”—were critical to the Iroquois and other Native Americans; flax is a versatile and ancient Mesopotamian crop. Other crops include carrots, beets, the exotic (at least to this writer) vetch legume and epazote, an herb used to flavor beans.
Worms aren’t yucky
The schools have also planted milkweed and other butterfly-friendly flowers to attract brilliant green and black Monarch caterpillars. This gives students the chance to observe the caterpillars constructing their sleek green chrysalises, monitor their dormant period and watch in wonder as brilliant butterflies break free. Students learn to compost—some even get beyond the attendant yuck factor of slimy worms—and they cultivate an appreciation for beneficial insects like bees because they’ve learned to appreciate how these creatures help plants grow.
“We have tried very hard to make this an outdoor classroom,” says Isela Mendez, a second-grade teacher at Fruit Ridge. “We teach social science, life science, biology, art and language arts. It’s a quiet, beautiful place that gives children a chance to get away from their desks and out into nature.”
Surviving political climate change
Slowly but surely, despite changes in academic priorities, accountability systems and fiscal uncertainties, school gardens and related agriculture programs are taking root at rural, urban and suburban schools across the country.
School-based clubs and classes like 4-H and Future Farmers of America have long been established parts of many school curriculums. But these programs tend to be specialized—aimed primarily at students who are considering agriculture as a profession.
School gardens and related garden-based education reach wider audiences, giving kids an alternative to mass-marketed fast food and sugary treats and demonstrating to children, especially those who live in cities, that fruits and vegetables don’t spring from the ground shrink-wrapped or packaged in Styrofoam.
Garden supporters say students are so addicted to their cell phones, MP3 players and laptops that they’re developing what best-selling author Richard Louv calls a “nature deficit disorder.”
California’s school garden movement got a big boost in 1995 when then-state Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, who describes herself as a “granddaughter of a farmer and daughter of a gardener,” established the “Garden in Every School” initiative.
“School gardens are still a great passion of mine,” she says. “I believe very strongly in the power of gardens to transform students’ lives. When I left office in 2003, there were gardens at 3,000 schools and some wonderful research from UC Davis that showed gardens had a positive impact on student learning. We worked on curriculum frameworks showing how gardens and cooking from gardens could be used to teach the academic standards.”
Garden supporters were excited last year when then-State Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, who said he wanted to help create gardens for children with urban backgrounds similar to his own, authored a bill to provide $15 million for school garden grants that run through 2009.
The governor signed Assembly Bill 1535, and the state allocated more than $10.8 million to 4,000 schools. Forty percent of the state’s public schools received grants that ranged from $2,500 for schools with fewer than 1,000 students to $5,000 for larger schools, but the remaining $4.2 million won’t be allocated because of the state’s fiscal crisis.
Gardens part of larger campaign
The end of the grant program, while disappointing, won’t kill the movement. Most of the funds went to schools that already had established gardens. In 2002, nearly 60 percent of the 4,194 principals who responded to a state survey said they had school gardens. Eighty-five percent reported they used gardens as part of academic instruction in a long list of subjects. The state is continuing to gather data from schools that received the latest round of state grants to find out more about the benefits of school gardens.
School gardens are a crucial component of a broader and expanding national collection of public and private initiatives to improve students’ nutrition, physical fitness, overall health, and of course, their academic success.
Federal and state programs, some of which get support from public agriculture and health agencies as well as a wide variety of commercial enterprises related to gardens and farming, are tackling everything from improving the quality of school food to producing curricular guides integrating academic standards into gardening activities and “how-to” manuals for establishing gardens.
Thanks to Eastin’s garden initiative, the state established and continues to help finance three regional garden-based resource learning centers operated by the University of California, Davis, UC Santa Cruz and the San Diego Regional School Garden Resource Center, which is run by a number of public agencies that support school gardens. These three centers train teachers and aspiring school gardeners, plant and maintain model educational gardens, publish garden and curriculum guides, support a wide a range of other garden-related activities, and work cooperatively with a varied network of other garden enthusiasts.
California—the world’s largest agricultural producer, with a year-round growing season—seems like fertile ground for this growing school gardening movement. And garden supporters say the issue of improving kids’ nutrition and fitness has never been more urgent.
It’s not easy to compete with the pervasive corporate marketing of sugary, salty, high-fat fast food engineered to appeal to young taste buds. A recent state survey concluded that only one-fifth of California children between ages 9 and 11 eat the recommended five daily servings of fresh fruit and vegetables.
With childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes escalating at alarming rates among young children, supporters say school gardens are a great way to help kids develop a taste for fruits and vegetables, especially when they’ve grown and harvested the food themselves. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell has made improving student fitness and nutrition one of his top priorities, and the California Department of Education offers four garden-based publications that cover everything from integrating state academic standards into garden activities to cooking common school garden crops.
Making salads cool
A number of recent studies show that school gardens are making a dent in fast-food dominance. The state Department of Health Services launched its own marketing campaign, “5-A Day Power Play!” and found that students who participated in school gardens ate more fruits and vegetables than those who had not “experienced gardening.” Student gardeners were also more likely to increase their healthy food consumption in the future.
Although the Davis Unified School District had to eliminate its much-admired “Crunch Lunch” program of healthy elementary school cafeteria lunches because of staffing costs, the district buys 20 percent of its produce from local farmers and operates salad bars at junior highs and high schools. Last year, Davis voters approved a parcel tax that will, among other things, provide about $70,000 to the Farm-to-School program over four years, and supporters plan to reinstate the Crunch Lunch program at district elementary schools.
Supporters say school gardens have the potential to encourage teamwork and cooperation and even reduce the number of students diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and discipline problems by giving squirmy children a productive way to work off steam so they’re able to sit quietly at their desks later.
For English learners, gardens can also be a way to involve parents in school who are agricultural experts but may have little formal education. One Sacramento teacher said her English learners are improving their language skills by working alongside native-speaking classmates in school gardens.
Establishing school gardens in densely developed urban districts, where it could be argued students need them most, can be especially challenging. But districts have gotten creative. Schools in Chicago and Washington, D.C., have built rooftop gardens, and more than 500 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District have gardens. The district also receives federal support and money from the state Department of Public Health for its “Network for a Healthy California—LAUSD project.” The district’s “Harvest of the Month” program provides nutrition education and free produce from local farmers (packed and provided by CSBA business affiliate Ripple Riley Thomas LLC), so students can taste—and, ideally, develop a liking for—fresh fruits and vegetables.
Learning and labor
School gardening is nothing new. One study estimated that there were 80,000 gardens in American schools in 1910. Believing that it was vital to connect kids to nature, educator and philosopher John Dewey recommended that schools be surrounded by trees and gardens; students in his University of Chicago Model School maintained a garden. The innovative Italian educator Maria Montessori was a big supporter of creating gardens to boost social and academic skills of preschoolers and to increase their knowledge of the natural world.
But the movement languished during the post-World War II era as fertile, multipurpose playing fields were paved over and campuses had less and less room for open space.
A study by researchers at Occidental College’s Center for Food and Justice says that gardens made a comeback in the 1990s, in part due to the growing popularity of community gardens in urban areas. Educators became convinced that school gardens helped students “learn by doing,” the study said, incorporating a popular pedagogic concept.
Many modern educators agree that school gardening yields incalculable benefits.
“An inspiration for teaching; a real-life illustration of theories; endless opportunities for students to learn by doing,” says Doug Mosebar, chair of the board of the California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom. “Agriculture is a unique teaching tool that not only supports the academic experience of students, but also provides them with crucial life skills and a basis of knowledge that will carry them into adulthood.”
Research shows that school gardens can boost academic achievement. In 1999, CDE examined eight pairs of environment-based education programs and control schools or programs in California. Data from this study, combined with prior research, revealed that over 77 percent of students in environment-based education programs scored higher than their peers across all standardized tests and had higher grade point averages.
A tough row to hoe
These are especially tough economic times for public schools and the state in general, and at a time when the schools are increasingly pressured to boost reading and math scores, this regimented educational era might seem a depressing time for school garden enthusiasts.
But despite uneven and uncertain funding, a profusion of public-private partnerships, resource centers and support programs is springing up, like—forgive the pun—weeds across California and the rest of the country.
Jeri L. Ohmart, children’s garden program coordinator at the UC Davis regional learning center’s Children’s Garden Program, says she’s confident that there’s plenty of momentum to keep agriculture-based projects alive and well.
Businesses like Smith & Hawken Ltd, a Novato-based supplier, are helping finance the National Gardening Association’s Adopt a School Garden program, and corporate enterprises like Orchard Supply Hardware and Home Depot are providing significant support to individual schools and to educational nonprofits like the Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom and the California School Garden Network.
Supporters of family farms and the “slow food” movement are devising strategies to get local produce into public school meal programs. Organizations like the California School Garden Network and the Center for Land-Based Learning are also actively promoting gardening by providing resources and support, training teachers and teaching kids hands-on gardening skills.
“People are finding more and more ways to get gardens and farm-to-school programs onto their school campuses,” Ohmart says. “Parents volunteer their time, Master Gardeners offer advice, PTAs are allocating funds for school garden coordinators, and teachers are looking for ways to weave gardens into their curriculum.”
The KidsGardening organization, an affiliate of the National Gardening Association, estimates that its Adopt a School grant program helped 37,476 California students work in a school, community or church garden in 2007. Forty-five percent of these grants went to public schools, and 60 percent of grant recipients who responded to an association survey said they integrated state and federal education standards into their garden studies.
“The children at hundreds of schools have told me that they had evolved from disliking vegetables to loving them,” former state superintendent Eastin says. “The children of California are indeed making education ‘come alive’ when they are learning in a living laboratory called a garden.”
Carol Brydolf (cbrydolf@csba.org) is a staff writer for California Schools.
Related links: