Kitchen Classrooms

 The Garden School Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to garden-based education. Our pilot program at the 24th Street Elementary School in the West Adams neighborhood of South Los Angeles was founded when the school community decided that kids had enough asphalt - and not enough nature. 7 years later, the 24th Street gardens span over 1 acre and include 55 fruit trees, 20 vegetable beds, habitat gardens, Native CA Woodlands, a reading garden, and multiple teaching spaces.

We are a High School micro-farm that grows and sells tomatoes, lettuce, sweet potatoes, and herbs to teachers and the community.  We also pride ourselves in building school gardens for other neighboring schools.

We are a residential juvenile facility with the desire to teach nutritious food choices, healthy/gourmet food preparation and hands-on planting/picking and preserving of our school greenhouse and garden.  We also teach and practice entrepreneurship lessons, including growing, preparing and selling our own hot pepper jelly, salsa and pine wreaths.  This is our first year to have a class entitled Farm to School and we are learning and working hard to create a viable program that will be helpful and useful to students in their future endeavors. 

South Philadelphia High School Gardens, or SPHS Gardens for short, are located in two formerly vacant lots on either side of the school's parking lot. A local South Philly neighborhood organization, the Lower Moyamensing Civic Association (LoMo), teamed up with South Philadelphia HS in 2012 to create a vegetable garden for students and neighbors to share. The raised bed gardens serve as an outdoor classroom for hands-on science, math, ESOL, english, culinary arts, and special education lessons.