Garden Classrooms

Dr Martin Luther King Jr. School Complex

The mission of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Garden is to create a lifelong learning opportunity for our students; growing food, caring for it, and sharing surplus. This grant will help us increase student learning and improve teaching by extending the classroom to include the outdoors. Students will be active partners and key stakeholders in the intellectual, emotional, physical and social growth that comes from the maintenance of the garden.

St. Albans City School

We are in our third year of having students plant, tend, and harvest vegetables, herbs, and flowers from our gardens. Our few fruit trees are too small to bear fruit yet. All our students get to taste what they helped grow. The goal is to give our (basically urban) students an understanding of how foods make it to their tables and how tasty the food they grow can be.

Steiner Ranch Elementary

School gardens have resulted in improved dietary intake and related dietary behaviors, such as preferences, motivation, and self-efficacy to eat fruits and vegetables in children all over. Several studies have also shown that a school based gardening program enhances academic performances. Outdoor classrooms provide “hands on” experience of planting the seed, nurturing the growing of the plants, harvesting the produce, and in some cases preparing/cooking the produce. When children have the opportunity to use their hands they become active participants instead of passive learners.

Barnette Elementary School

The goal of Barnette's Buster Blossoms is to incorporate healthy, wellness and nutrition throughout the school and across all grade levels. We are hoping Buster's Blossoms will bring new partnerships from people throughout the community in growing, learning and eating produce provided by Buster's Community Garden. By teaching students the science behind vegetable growth and the wellness in making healthy choices and the philanthropy of sharing and doing good for the earth and community.

Coastal Middle School

Our eighth grade Humanities classes study the Colonial times from the early 1600's to the late 1700's. Our goal is to plant crops that sustained Colonial life. These cash crops were exported and used by the colonists in their everyday life. Each year our eighth grade students get to experience first hand what life was like during these times as they walk through Wormsloe Plantation. Back at school the opportunity for hands on learning; growing fruits and vegetables and bringing them to farmers markets, this will help us maintain our gardens.

Hilltop Elementary

Our garden’s primary goal is to incorporate the outdoors into multiple facets of classroom learning. We are currently in the process of segmenting the garden into smaller areas that will enhance individual lessons. For example, we are creating a Texas Pioneers garden with vegetables and plants that early settlers to this area would have grown. This dovetails with social studies lessons. The garden’s secondary goal is to familiarize the children with different vegetables and open them up to trying healthy new foods.

Douglas Elementary

Our garden's goal is to help educate our students and community members about not only nutrition and how plants are planted and grow, but about being a community member, helper, and understanding differences in peoples lives. We want to utilize this grant for tools and tool storage so the children have something to use during class times outside in the garden. We would also utilize the grant to create another raised garden bed or two. This will allow us to have more produce to give back to the community and will also allow for more space and outdoor teaching time with the classes.

D L Dusty Dickens

Receipt of this grant will allow us to build more raised bed gardens. We currently have 3 beds and we would like to add 3 additional beds. This will make it possible for every grade level to have a designated bed in the garden. Having our children and families assist and collaborate with teachers in the garden can increase the chance that they will eat more of the fruits and vegetables they have helped to grow. With perseverance and community work from teachers, parents and students, we can grow fresh and nutritious fruits and vegetables.

Garfield ES

We currently have a school learning garden with ten raised beds. It was donated thanks to a three year grant from the American Heart Association. The grant provided all the needed start-up supplies, as well as twice yearly planting days. As the Garden Champion, I met with a seasoned gardener who works for the AHA and she lead me through their curriculum and basic garden lessons. Now that our grant is expiring, it is up to myself and a team of students and parents, to keep our garden going strong!

Emma B Trask Middle School

Our first goal is to create an Ability/Sensory Garden. The purpose is to provide a dynamic interactive educational space for engaging in gardening with a therapeutic goal. These types of gardens are popular with and beneficial to both students and teachers, especially those who have sensory processing issues, including autism and other disabilities. It may be used as a calming place and as a gentle way to stimulate the senses.

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