Lincoln Elementary

Our long-term goal is to have our students help plant, maintain and harvest vegetables throughout the school year. Depending on the amount of vegetables we harvest, we hope to serve them in our school cafeteria for student lunches. In addition, we plan to sell the harvested vegetables to our school community when we have other events in the school, i.e. evening band concerts or open houses.

We also plan to use the garden as a teaching tool. Several teachers on our gardening team also plan to use the garden to teach their students about planting, how plants grow, what types of soil is best for growing food, how important it is to eat healthy and fresh produce, as opposed to processed foods, etc. The Kindergarten teachers, for example, plan to begin growing vegetables using grow beds in their classroom and then transplant them to the greenhouse/rooftop garden. They plan to incorporate the planting with their science curriculum.

In order to maintain the garden effectively, we plan to have an after-school garden club made up of students ranging from grades 3-8. These students will learn about sanitation, cleanliness, proper handling of garden tools, and gardening itself. Students will have hands-on experience with the planting, maintenance and harvesting of the garden. They also will partake in the eating of the fresh produce that is harvested. We plan to incorporate gardening lessons in this after-school club as well as reach out in the community to have guest speakers come speak to the students about the "farm to table" concept. This will hopefully inspire students to grow gardens of their own at home, visit gardens around the city and become more aware of healthy eating habits at home or when they dine out at restaurants.

With this after-school club, we hope to also have students experiment with hydroponics and see how plants grown that way may differ from plants grown organically. We also plan to have the students research what types of plants grow best in certain types of soils and climates. We also plan to have the older students become peer mentors to the younger students and help teach them how to plant the garden. In addition to planting vegetable gardens, we also plan to plant other plants and flowers to beautify our greenhouse and rooftop garden.

This grant will help further many aspects of education at Lincoln: nutrition, agriculture, community-building, giving back to their own school community, research skills and health awareness. Our school community will benefit by having a school garden that can offer healthy eating choices for students during lunchtime which will hopefully encourage healthy eating habits outside of school. The larger community outside our school will benefit by having a garden to come and view, as well as have the ability to purchase organically grown vegetables from their neighborhood school garden. By doing so, the funds raised from that will all go towards the upkeep and maintenance of the school garden.