Growing School and Youth Gardens in New York City: A Guide To Resources 2009

by Kerry Truman, Eating Liberally 

A bountiful, beautiful food garden in every school? Yes, it's a dream, but so was the White House kitchen garden, and Alice Water's Edible Schoolyard before it. Thanks to a terrific new guide to starting school gardens, Growing School and Youth Gardens in New York City, the vision of edible schoolyards in every community is that much closer to a reality.

The excellent edible endeavors of Michelle Obama and Alice Waters have inspired school gardens to spring up all over the country. But there are hundreds of unsung horticultural heroes who've been working for years, even decades, to get kids excited about learning how to sow, harvest, and cook fresh, homegrown fruits and veggies.

One such hero is FSNYC's own Leslie Boden, who labored long and hard in collaboration with GreenThumb to compile this fantastic, comprehensive resource for anyone who's interested in starting a school garden. Growing School and Youth Gardens in New York City is a thoughtfully written guide with clear, helpful tips on everything you need to know and extensive listings that instruct you on where to find all the tools--both literally and figuratively--that you need to get your school growing.

And though the guide was compiled with our own region in mind, it's a goldmine of useful links to resources that would be helpful to schools nationwide. The guide provides extensive descriptions of each resource that's listed, making it easy to pinpoint the sites that will be most relevant for your particular space and project. Cheers to Boden and the many folks who did all the digging to produce this invaluable resource.