School Gardens

I have a small school garden which I began with my 4th graders last year. I am totally on my own with this as I receive absolutely no support in any form whatsoever from staff, administration, parents or community.I would like to know what is going on around Maricopa County as well as schools all over AZ as far as school gardens goes?Lindy

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  • Linda, I am in a similar situation and would love to talk with you about this. You can email me at alleyhendricks@yahoo.com
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    • Heather, thanks so much for this info. I will now have time to get this taken care of before the start of the 2008/09 school year.

      Lindy
    • Hi Lindy, Jennifer,and all,

      I'm still getting used to this discussion format and logging in, so apologies for the delayed input. Always feel free to contact me at haokvat@yahoo.com as well. Here is info on a 2009 Youth Garden Grant Program, sponsored by the National Gardening Association and Home Depot.

      Deadline: 11/1/08
      Amount: up to $1,000 in gift cards (see below)
      Website: http://www.kidsgardening.org/YGG.asp
      Description: NGA awards Youth Garden Grants to schools and community orgs w/ child-centered garden programs. In evaluating grant applications, priority will be given to programs that emphasize one or more of the following elements: educational focus or curricular/program integration; nutrition or plant-to-food connections; environmental awareness/ed; entrepreneurship; and social aspects of gardening such as leadership development, team building, community support, or service-learning.

      Schools, youth groups, community centers, camps, clubs, treatment facilities, and intergenerational groups in the U.S. are eligible to apply. Applicants must plan to garden with at least 15 children b/t the ages of 3 and 18.

      For the 2009 grant cycle, 125 grants are available. Packages are as follows: 5 programs will receive gift cards valued at $1000 ($500 to Home Depot and $500 to the Gardening with Kids catalog and store) and educational materials from NGA; 70 programs will receive a $500 gift card to Home Depot and educational materials from NGA; and 50 programs will receive a $250 gift card to Home Depot and educational materials from NGA. Each award also includes 12 mos. of NGA Supporter benefits.
  • We garden at our school with K-8th graders. We have a relatively large garden, but a great variety of interest among teachers (from none to lots!). Depending on the year we have between 40 and 100 students gardening.

    Last year our 7th and 8th graders integrated the garden into an Ancient Chinese social studies course and then eating the results. Our fourth and sixth graders were also growing things, but I think that was just experiments to see what would grow from the seeds they brought from home.

    I also worked at an elementary school in south Phoenix (Valley View Elementary) that was planting hundreds of fruit trees on the property. They also had pigs, a goat, lots of chickens and such. They got rid of the pigs, but I believe they still have most of their other animals.
  • Hey Garden Goddess - thanks so much for this info. :-D I will look into it today.

    Lindy
    • Lindy,
      I started the, and am currently 1/3 of the workforce of our School Nature Studies Program. I say currently because as founders we maintain the sites year round, but we have alot of help with all aspects of big projects.
      So, about us
      We did install an ABC container garden for our Kindergarten but otherwise we've primarily focused on building outdoor classrooms,school beautification through native plantings and structures, teacher support

      We used Housenumbers.com (owned by Joel Harvey, a nice fella in N.E. Phoenix) bricks and Phoenix Design Cast animal benches and planters as our primary fundraisers, but we also received both Lowe's and Home Depot gift cards from those companies (Home Depot wanted to send team depot out but we had parent support and didn't need the pro's). Also our boy scout troop was AMAZING!

      We applied for, but didn't win, the $10,000 grant from the local Pond Gnome school habitat project and looked into the Captain Planet Foundation, and Kids Gardening Grant. A few of our benches were supplied by the city of Phoenix. We're under construction on our grounds so we took this year off except small stuff but have a few major projects planned for next year.

      OrangeWood Elementary looked at our project last year as they have implemented a school garden and were looking into outdoor classrooms, Madison Rose Lane has beautiful butterfly gardens and outdoor learning centers (they go for art grants and parents put in the plantings to compliment the artwork). Motessori (spelling?) Day School has an awesome green house, SFG and grape arbor that (last time I'd visited) had failed. They just had no parents to support it.
      I'd love to show you around our school. If your schedule is anything like ours why don't we do it this summer when you have a few minutes on my side of town? We're pretty much on Glendale and the 51.
      Or, if you are doing the 11:30 Urban Farm thing this Saturday I could take you over right after that. You better call me in that case 602-478-7769 as I'm in school all day tomorrow.
      Take care and good luck!
      Nichol
  • Hi Jen, I do have some older pics - nothing recent. I'll have to go on a dig for them and get them on here.

    Lindy
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