Children & youths' gardening association/ Kumpula school garden/ Green Branch Youth Program

The Helsinki School Garden celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2012.  The original motivation for school gardening activities in the city  was the concern for the welfare of the working class families.

The first school garden was founded with capital donated to the city for the purpose in the last will of Axel Ärt, a master brick mason, who wanted to make sure that the working class children would have the opportunity during school summer vacations to learn the skills of gardening while bringing a significant addition to their families' dinner table, both in terms of quantity and particularly in terms of variaty and nutritious quality .

There have been three school gardens in the city, but the Kumpula School Garden, designed and built for the purpose in the late 1920s in a neighbourhood of "garden cities" in the social tradition of Ebenezer Howard is the only one in operation. 

The day-camps with gardening and environmental art activities form still the core, but additional activities include:

- The Green Branch Youth Program is for 16-29 year olds who are unemployed and and not enrolled in any education or training. The youths acquire garden competences both in landscaping/park management as well as vegetable and fruit production. The program is based on the national horticulture vocational cuuriculum, but it is entirely work based. Those participants that have gone on to formal vocational programs have received a good amount of credits from the 6 month program. Besides gardening, the youths also sell garden products and process them through catering work or as herbal teas and various kinds of preserves.  Among the customers are some of the finest restaurants in Helsinki.

- The family gardening club, offering 20 families a year a garden plot (half of the families have been before and half are newcomers). Tools, seeds, gardening advice and activities for children are provided. The social aim is to foster peer collaboration and support parenting.

- Own garden plots and advise for schools and school classes 

- Guided educational visits 

- Activities for disabled children mainly in form of own summer camp as well as acceesible nature path to be realised in 2013.

- Gardening short courses and volunteering opportunities throughout the growing season

- community outreach: advise and training for day care centers, schools and youth centers wanting to start their own gardens, promotion  and training for including garden as a learning environment in realising curriculum objectives, consultation for urban gardening programs, Moodle e-learning

- Mentoring and guidance for university students working on graduate thesis or other academic work involving kids' gardening as topic

In the link below you can read an account of a visit to the garden by the US Ambassador and his wife together with Richard McCarthy repseenting Edible schoolyards in New Orleans and his wife Bonnie Goldblum.

https://www.embassy-worldwide.com/embassy/u-s-embassy-in-helsinki-finland