Common Ground Garden

The Common Ground Garden, a project of Ecology Action, seeks to transform students' and visitors' relationship to food in their lives by inspiring and empowering them to explore mindful eating, to make healthy, sustainable and just food choices, and ultimately to grow their own food through biologically-intensive, more sustainable gardening. We seek to actively engage the local and regional community through educational programming. The three core target groups are students from nearby schools, people with an already developed interest in deep sustainability in food production, and local hobby gardeners. Over the course of the last year and a half our main focus has shifted toward our work with youth and students who come to the garden through class visits. The garden is within a 15 minute walk of six schools that collectively serve more than 3,000 students. Our vision for our students is to teach them to be “good eaters” - eaters who have a firm understanding of how to make food choices that positively impact their bodies, the environment, and the people who produce their food. In addition to working directly with students, we seek to develop and publish curriculum firmly rooted in GROW BIOINTENSIVE as well as state and national standards of education. Our work with such a broad range of ages will enable us to create curriculum that spans grade levels and provides an educational continuum that can bring students more deeply into the practice and concepts of being good eaters. We hope to create an identity that strongly communicates this as our main focus, and is both identifiable and attractive to these visitors.