Darnall Charter School Garden

The desire to start a school garden came from the creation of a Sustainability Club (now known as the Darnall Earth Saver’s Club) two years ago. A group of 45 students in grades 2-6 come together Fridays after school to decide on ways that we, as a school community, can help and conserve our environment. Creating a new school garden was at the top of their list and is now a reality. We spend our Friday afternoons planting, fertilizing, weeding, harvesting, collecting seeds, and preparing our garden beds for the next planting season. Nine classrooms and the Sustainability Club were involved last year in the inaugural planting season. We just built eight more garden beds this fall and had a planting day where ten classes and the Sustainability Club planted winter vegetables, herbs, and plants in our new butterfly garden.

The primary goal for the garden is for each grade level to have their own raised garden plot to incorporate into their academic standards. The garden will be a space that our students can learn to grow their own food and learn about the different varieties of fruits and vegetables that they may never have tried. This garden will be a place where our students can be exposed to the natural world and learn through observations, investigations, experiments, and hands-on experiences to enhance the learning that happens inside the classroom.

The objectives of our school garden are to provide a space for students to:

-learn healthier eating habits as they will be closely involved in growing their food from planting to harvest;

-explore and investigate plants and animals in a garden ecosystem to support their learning in the classroom;

-share their knowledge and harvest with our school community and families;

-understand how to be stewards of our natural environment.