Horseshoe Trails Elementary

The goal for the Horseshoe Trails garden is for all students to have an opportunity to experience gardening. For many of our students, this will be their first gardening experience and we hope to ignite a passion for future gardeners. We'd also like to encourage teachers to utilize the garden as a tool for scientific and multi-disciplinary learning. John Muir said, "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he find it attached to the rest of the world." We believe the garden can be used to teach virtually any subject in a hands-on, meaningful way. The process of planning, planting, growing, nurturing and maintaining a garden has important academic, social-emotional and wellness benefits. Outdoor learning can be an important extension of indoor learning. The experience of gardening can be differentiated for every level of learner, including those with special needs. Nature is dynamic and ever changing, so gardening is a high-interest activity. We hope our school garden will help to nurture nature education for a wide variety of students, "planting seed"s for future stewards of the environment. Childhood nature experiences can be an important pathway to adult environmental attitudes and behaviors. The mission statement for Horseshoe Trails Elementary School is to create "a thinking and learning environment in which individuals think, work and expect the best from themselves and others as global citizens". The garden will provide many opportunities for children to think globally about what is involved in growing food, where food comes from and what that might mean for our future.