Middle School

Paint Rock Valley High School

We are a small, rural school with 100 students preschool through 12th grade. Our garden is a component of a larger project to develop an agriculture and agribusiness curricula with aquaponics and integrate these with a home economics curriculum. We hope that this will provide our students with viable alternatives to or to augment row crops and teach them to grow, prepare and eat healthy, locally-grown food. We plan to build greenhouses for the garden and fish tanks so that the programs can proceed throughout the year.

Athens Christian Preparatory Academy

The purpose of our school garden will be three-fold. First, and most importantly, the garden will be used to teach students where food comes from. We want our students to understand that food comes from the land and the labor of those who work the land. Our first goal in anything we do is to teach our students responsibility. In the case of our garden we will instill responsibility by emphasizing the importance of sustainability and community awareness.

Luther School

Our goal is to get all our students closer to their healthy food: planning, planting, caring for, harvesting, preparing and eating vegetables from or garden. Last year we were able to fundraise for and build three 4x4 raised beds. During a work session with our Extension Office and local volunteers, the students built a simple soaker hose watering system and planted the beds using the square-foot gardening method. We also planted micro-greens in small plastic clamshell containers and sprouted seeds in CD cases to study their growth.

Agnes L. Mathers Elementary Secondary

The community of Sandspit consists of approximately 250 people. The school is an integral part of the community and many community members have helped to volunteer with the construction and maintenance of the garden. The garden and greenhouse are an integral part of the school community and are greatly supported by the community. We would love to be able to upgrade our current garden site. We are hoping to extend the current size of the garden and repair the plastic that has been damaged. As well, we are looking to purchase plants and seeds that can be grown in our garden area.

Saint Augustine Academy

Our garden goals are:
* To teach our students to love and enjoy good food.
* To teach our students the skills to feed themselves and others.
* To awaken our students' love of being outside with nature as they experience the thrill of watching their plants grow into food.
* To teach our students how to successfully and responsibly maintain a sustainable garden.

Alternative Family Education

We have five raised beds that students currently use to grow vegetables and edible herbs. We want to expand our garden teaching to include more urban agricultural techniques by building vertical gardens, using low-cost, easily-accessible materials. We also want to incorporate a rainwater harvesting system to irrigate both the existing raised beds as well as the proposed vertical gardens. Irrigation with the rainwater would be powered by two treadle pumps, which would be built by students and their families as a science project.

St. Martin de Porres Academy

St. Martin de Porres Academy instills the values of hard-work and service into all of its students. The existence of an active community gardening program is an incredible addition to those efforts, as well as curriculum enhancement. While our garden has been modest, we are currently providing the framework that will improve our past efforts, and ensure the continuing success and sustainability of the program.

Next Wave Junior High

Our goal is to provide an active growing space and on-site learning lab for Somerville's only alternative middle school. The school is designed to meet the special academic, social, emotional, and behavioral needs of adolescents who, for many reasons, have experienced difficulty in the traditional education settings. Though a garden infrastructure exists, it was built when the school was a temporary elementary school, and the growing space itself has been fallow for several years. In a significant way, this is a new garden for a new group of students.

Nightingale Montessori

Nightingale Montessori has an established cooking program with student participation that is part of our National Lunch and Breakfast Program. We have found that when children participate in the preparation of healthy food, they eat healthy food. We would like to expand this experience and include vegetables from a school garden into the cooking program. We have initiated plans to grow food to be utilized in this cooking program. We plan to expand to grow tomatoes and green beans with students.

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