SPHS Gardens

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. The organic-method produce is grown, maintained, harvested and washed by students and volunteers and sold at a student-run farm stand inside the school, a local farmers market, to local businesses, donated to the culinary arts program, and free for all students! We are members of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's City Harvest Growers Alliance program, and through their support we are dedicated to increasing access to fresh, healthy produce and green space in our low-income community. In 2014 we hope to expand our nutrition programming, particularly for the school's student-parents and their young children.