Bellevue Edible Learning Laboratory

Program Type: 
Academic Classrooms, Garden Classrooms
Grade Level/Age Group: 
Adults/Professionals, Middle School
Number of Individuals Program Serves: 
1,000
About the Program: 

The BELL Garden exists to cultivate, guide, and encourage shared community values of healthy living and lifelong learning.
 
The BELL Garden supports this mission by providing practical learning opportunities for residents of the community in a setting that promotes physical activity, healthy eating, environmental stewardship, and multi-cultural connections for all generations.

Current initiatives include classroom interaction & hands on lessons in the garden, community events, garden workdays, an after school garden program, and produce tastings.Bell Garden is committed to sharing our harvest with the entire community, including those in need.

Set on an acre at the Bellevue Middle School in Nashville, TN - we are in our third year of a public-private partnership to establish a robust Certified Naturally Grown garden, orchard,outdoor classroom with fruits, veggies and chickens. Having rallied the forces for building a lot of the infrastructure, we are now in the phase of building continuity, leadership, governance and community buy-in.

Our weekend warrior and after-school programs have had the highest success rate with the least amount of effort. Our school-day activities are still sporadic and challenging. We have a large and diverse steering committee and great capacity for fun, education, community involvement and mutual growth.

This will be a year of establishing our identity, settling into an annual calendar and building traditions and new gateways for people to enter the garden and grow together.

Program Members: