Garden Classrooms

The goal of the Sci Academy outdoor garden is to provide students, families, teachers, and community members with a beautiful and functional space on campus for educational and social activities. Through our garden, we will teach our scholars about the benefits of local and sustainable food, the environmental impact of farming and gardening, and the therapeutic effects of working outdoors to produce something useable and resourceful.

The goals of the garden program are to improve classroom learning through hands-on outdoor experience, enable students to develop agricultural and environmental literacy, enhance student eating habits and overall health, build self-esteem, and instill a sense of achievement. This grant will facilitate the continuation of a successful gardening program which provides a valuable resource to the school and surrounding community. Specifically, the money will be applied toward a chain link fence that will keep animals out of the garden, therefore increasing its sustainability.

The goal of our Green Thumbs for Autism garden program is to offer a unique teaching opportunity for our students, all of whom have autism. With the help of their teachers, students learn to plant, water, weed, prune, harvest & compost waste from vegetables planted in the garden, as well as take inventory & create shopping lists used for trips to local businesses to purchase plants & supplies.

We have four primary objectives for our garden: promoting healthy foods and eating habits through the cultivation of fruits and vegetables; fostering volunteerism amongst our students and their families through participation in the garden; providing sustenance to our community through donation of produce to local food banks; and developing environmental responsibility through exposure to local growing challenges such as soil quality and limited natural resources.