Explorer Elementary Charter School

While our garden program has been strong since 2007, every passing year shows that our infrastructure -- long, untreated wood raised beds and pvc bubblers -- is aging and that elements need to be replaced. Having a strong infrastructure allows teachers and the garden coordinator the freedom and support to develop creative programming in the garden, knowing that the materials, tools, and structure are there to support whatever projects they can dream up. Having a FLEXIBLE infrastructure is very important, too, as it allows the garden to be a space of reinvention and community growth, as well as a place to grow plants.
The aging of our garden beds gives us an opportunity to rethink the structure of our garden, with the help of our students, parents, and community. It gives us an opportunity to use the element and idea of design in our educational program. How can we as a community create a garden that encourages us to interact as a community? We will put that question to our students as they help us rethink and redesign our garden. The grant money would specifically be used for the following re-design supplies:
$300 on 1/2 inch drip tubing, emitters and microtubing to revamp our watering system to be a more flesible and Southern-California-friendly. Drip tubing, as opposed to our current straight-line pvc/bubbler system would allow us to create different shapes of gardening beds, which still maintaining the automatic, water-saving system that allows us to be successful gardeners.
$1200 on three 4 x 2 foot round, and four 3 x 2 x 8 foot galvanized metal troughs to use as planters. These planters could be repositioned in various areas of the garden, and other beds could be created in-ground and in a variety of other planters.
$350 would be spent on soil, manure, seeds, plants, and, especially, fruit trees. Currently, we are able to only plant a few trees, and have planted several trees in half-barrels because we have no room in our garden because of the long, straight shapes of the beds.
$150 would be spent on a garden sink. A sink would encourage the use of our vegetables in our school lunch program by enabling veggies to be washed outdoors instead of at indoor sinks -- a task which inevitably causes conflict between different users of the indoor sinks. Currently, the shape of our garden -- the long straight beds covering most of the garden area -- make it difficult to fit a sink in.

Our initial garden design had little to do with interaction, and more to do with ease. It consists of long, straight garden beds in rigid rows. While this garden structure has allowed us to grow all manner of vegetables, and was made possible by the donation of long straight pieces of wood and pvc, it doesn't meet one very important component of our school's charter mission: to promote social-emotional intelligence. Since we have to begin replacing beds anyway, we have an opportunity to make the redesign of our garden a community project, and to work with students to design and create a garden that is more flexible and inviting, with corners for sitting and thinking, round edges that bring people together rather than corners and barriers that keep people apart. WE have a chance to create a garden that is not only a place to raise plants, but a place where students can simple BE in nature. A revamped garden design would do a lot to change the feeling of our garden, and make it a place we can fulfill our mission to raise emotionally and socially intelligent children. Having students design a garden based on their own wishes gives them a chance to practice mapping and use mathematics practically in order to create raised beds of different shapes and sizes, with a flex-tube drip watering system that allow beds to be moved and shifted when needed. When some garden beds are round and others straight, students are able to gather in a circle around them, side by side, as a community. Circles allow the possibility of creating such things as sunflower houses with sweet-pea roofs, or sensory gardens in which students can walk in and sit among the flowers, poetry walks with labyrinth paths. The straight lines of our garden at present discourage that kind of interaction with nature and with each other. Nature does not grow in straight lines and our new, rethought garden should not be built in straight lines, either.