Garden Classrooms

Our goal is to expand! We need to increase in size the variety of foods and the number of gardens. We live in a rural low income/high poverty community (2/3 of the students receives free/reduced lunch benefits). Due to the expense our student body does not have access to fresh fruits and vegetables on a regular basis. This garden will provide the students with the knowledge of planting harvesting and preserving foods. This information can be shared with families to plant a home garden!

The goal of this garden is to promote healthy food choices for the community's children and families. Families will share valuable time together while weeding watering and harvesting vegetables and preparing them at home. By eating nutritious foods the students and families will have healthier food choices at home at minimal cost. The children will learn valuable skills that they can use throughout their lives and share with their own families.

With the help of this grant we hope to involve all 250 students enrolled in our K-12 school district in our garden program. The garden will serve as an outdoor classroom for a range of interdisciplinary studies. It will supplement our school food services department with breakfast and lunch options as well as healthy classroom snacks. Locally grown produce will be made available to the community. And the garden will demonstrate the viability of small scale sustainable organic agriculture.

Once we have our garden started the school cafeteria is going to use some of the vegetables we grow to cook food with. One of our goals is to donate food to some of the student's families who are going through difficult times. In addition we would like to teach health and nutrition to the whole school community. We want them to know where food comes from and how to be self-sustaining. That way even if they come on hard times they'll know what to do.