Jane Addams K-8

Our garden goals are primarily to make a garden environment easily accessible to children at our school and to families in the neighborhood. JA K-8 is in an urban setting serving a large immigrant population with English as a second language. We have a high rate of free and reduced lunch and many families are living in apartments withhout access to garden space. The garden has gates that are always open so that it is accessible to any one at anytime. We see it as an important resource to help families feel welcome at the school. In addition, our goal is for the garden to be an important part of the JA K-8, E-STEM (Environmental Science Technology Engineering and Math) curriculum at all grade levels. Currently the garden is used primarily for grades 2-5; our goal is to partner with teachers in other grades to develop very specific garden-based programming to meet grade-level standards. When asked about the garden, our school's Science Specialist, Christine Benita said, "Our primary goal is to get kids outside enjoying the garden, contributing to the production of food and to the life cycle of plants, making connections for them to the classroom, and to what they eat and what they see at the grocery store." The grant would provide much-needed signage, to help both school and community members understand both our overall garden objectives, and its layout, as well as the purpose of some of its individual segments (raised beds, hay bale garden, butterfly garden, climate change garden, native plants garden, worm bin, nurse logs (coming soon!), berry garden (coming soon!), etc. it would also allow us to purchase a full class set of primary level garden gloves and trowels, as well as plant material, potting soil, pruners, and other needed equipment.