Cesar Chavez Middle School Garden Project

Established in 2009, our garden is a living laboratory that’s utilized to reinforce Common Core Standards, including science, math, history, and language arts while also providing an engaging environment to participate in the cycle of growing food.  The garden consists of a diverse array of fruits and vegetables. We focus on varieties of fruits and vegetables that are not only nutritious but historically and culturally significant, from heirloom beans, maize, quinoa, amaranth, and winter squash in the summer, to fava beans, wheat, kale, broccoli, and potatoes in the cooler months. We also have an extensive compost system in place to turn our school’s waste into a fertile resource for our garden.  Over the past few years, we’ve converted an abandoned area of our school into a lush, highly productive food forest!