Garden Classrooms

Building School Gardens

Started during the 2006–07 school year, Building School Gardens installs gardens at Chicago public schools to achieve the following purposes:

• Develop "garden teams" to support the garden,
• Integrate the gardens into multi-disciplinary curriculum at multiple grade levels,
• Use art creatively in the landscape,
• Instill an environmental ethic in those who the gardens effect, and
• Incorporate physical activity as a regular daily activity

Friends of St. Francis Childcare Center

Friends of St. Francis is a 35 year old multicultural preschool serving children ages two to five from families of all economic backgrounds.

Cory Elementary

Garden Leaders:

Jana Roush - janaroush@msn.com
Linda Scara – Lscara@comcast.net

Cory’s garden is located on the Southwest side of our building, off of Steele St. Our in-garden program is primarily for grades 1, 2, and 3 at the present time. Grades 4-5 are involved in the Youth Farmers’ Market.

Garden by Knight

I am the Career Technical Education culinary instructor for an inner city high school. We lost our horticulture program and since I have a background in horticulture the school has giving me the green houses and part of the campus to use for my program. We are establishing a student-run café where I'd like to serve the produce we grow. In addition, due to the fact that we are in a low socioeconomic area of the city and have a large Hispanic and Asian student body, I also wanted to start a community garden on campus to get parents involved in their child's school.

Bradley International Elementary

Garden Leader: Lee McClure – alethea_mcclure@yahoo.com

Bradley is beginning an after-school garden club for 4th and 5th graders this February, which will include gardening, cooking and science lessons. Additionally, the garden is used for art classes, and produce is sold at a Youth Farmers’ Market. A May Day celebration is planned.

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