Grow Pittsburgh

Grow Pittsburgh's school garden program was born in 2006 as a pilot program in two Pittsburgh Public Schools.  Over the years we have seen the interest and demand for school garden programming grow signficantly.  We currently support fifteen school gardens in the region and look forward to continuing to work with more schools through a bi-annual application process.

While not affiliated with Edible Schoolyard Berkeley, we have gained much inspiration from ESYB and the foundational work of Alice Waters.  We, too, believe in the seed-to-table model and the ability of real food to transform the lives of our communities through our students.  Our hope is that after adding the broccoli he weeded to a salad at school, a student will go home and ask for a salad with broccoli. After tasting the potatoes she harvested and gave to the chef in the garden, a student will go home and try her hand in the kitchen. Our hope is to transform the eating habits of families by building curiosity toward and familiarity with fresh fruits and vegetables in the youngest members of those families.

Our garden educators work together with teachers at the school sites to co-teach garden lessons, lead teacher trainings and adapt programming to meet the learning goals and needs of the individual school. 

Chef in the Garden, a fall event staged at school garden sites, brings local PIttsburgh chefs into the school gardens.  Working with one class at a time, the chef cooks up a delicious snack with the students using produce from the school garden.  Other Community Outreach Events throughout the school year include family cooking nights, harvest potlucks and spring "wake-up the garden events".

Grow Pittsburgh (www.growpittsburgh.org) is an urban agriculture nonprofit with a mission to teach people how to grow food and promote the benefits that gardens bring to our neighborhood.  Many other programs exist beyond the school gardening to meet this mission.

We also have a school garden specific website(www.edibleschoolyardpgh.org) which includes: over 80 curriculum-aligned garden lesson plans, seed variety and source list, crop rotation schedules, insect ID cards, crop information cards, garden-themed children's book reccomendations, school garden start-up how to information and more.