The New School of Lancaster

New School of Lancaster students are dirt-and-life-loving, curious young people who are eager to plant and savor vegetables and fruits from our school grounds. We are building food-growing and soil-growing spaces that can be used by all the students in our PreK-8 school.

By building raised bed gardens on the west side of our building, with a compost area just adjacent, around the south side, students will have easy, daily access to see and participate in their gardens growing. Currently we halfheartedly compost with a compost tumbler, but we have a vision for a larger, redesigned space that can accommodate all of our compostable lunch waste.  This spring we built four new rasied beds and the students joyfully planted seeds as well as seedlings they had started inside.

Our goals are to have productive gardens that extend the hands-on learning environment beyond our classrooms, to encourage healthy food choices, and to teach children about the cycles of matter in nature – from food to compost to food again.