school gardening

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.

Posted by Kerry Trueman, eatingliberally.orgFifth Avenue’s about the last place you’d expect to see cabbages and kale flourishing, but a mini farm has sprouted up like some agrarian apparition inside the gallery at Parsons The New School for Design at Fifth Avenue and 13th Street. Installed by the Yale Sustainable Food Project, it’s just the latest tasty testament to the fervor for food gardening that’s sweeping schools across the country.The exhibit features three 15 foot-long planters filled with Red Russian kale, Osaka Purple mustard greens, Bright Lights swiss chard, Ruby Moon hyacinth beans, and other highly ornamental edibles. The mini farm, on display till May, is being lovingly tended by Parsons and New School students.Just a few blocks south, New York University has its own urban farmer faction--the NYU Community Agriculture Club.

Posted by Christina Grace, NYS Dept of Agriculture & Markets, and Billy Doherty, NYC Depart of Education, SchoolFood

What is Garden to School Café?
Garden to School Café is a pilot program of NYC Department of Education, SchoolFood and NYS Department of Agriculture & Markets in collaboration with Cornell Cooperative Extension; GreenThumb; Added Value; and more than 20 community-based organizations.  The goal is to connect school gardening and school lunch menus through seasonal harvest events and supporting educational activities.

Objectives of the Garden to School Café Pilot
•    Increase student’s healthful eating by promoting consumption of plant-based menu items and connecting kids to local   food and farming
•    Connect school gardening with SchoolFood’s broad-based efforts to source more local foods
•    Build awareness of the benefits of school gardening
•    Demonstrate the learning opportunity of integrating school gardening and school lunch.

Pilot Participants
In the spring, twenty schools were recruited to participate in the pilot program.  Participation in the Garden to Café pilot project required that schools and partner community-based organizations meet basic criteria.  Schools were chosen through an open competitive application process. 

Participation in the program required: 
•    An established garden or farm
•    An established children/youth gardening program
•    Liability insurance for community gardens or urban farms
•    Safe soil demonstrated through soil test results or proof of new soil from a safe source.