Mulberry School Cooking and Gardening Program

When you can go to the grocery store and buy just about anything you want, it is easy to become disconnected to our food system.    The mission of Mulberry's Cooking and Gardening Program is to connect students to their food, environment, and the community. The students are involved in every part of the growing process—from seed to table.  By participating in this process, students develop a personal connection with the natural world.  Developing this sense of stewardship is integral for students to become active citizens in todays global society and become advocates for environmental justice.   

Mulberry School was founded in 1963 in Campbell, California and moved to Los Gatos after 40 years.  It is a nonsectarian, nonprofit private school that is inclusive of all families of every race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin. Mulberry School educates approximately 145 students Preschool Program through Middle School.

The Preschoolers plant and tend a garden, and participate in cooking their own snack daily.  They practice skills such as spreading, mixing, measuring, tearing and kneading.  They often harvest food from the garden for their recipes.  

Junior Kindergarteners through Fifth graders participate in a weekly cooking and gardening class.  Our Cooking and Gardening Teacher, Debi Sabo, plans her curriculum according to the seasonality of the garden, students interests, and is inspired by her experience working at Hidden Villa Farm and LifeLab Lessons.  

The students' projects include everything from making garden salads with kumquat dressing from a family’s harvest to taste testing vegetables that resemble the parts of the body they benefit for a 1st/2nd grade unit on the 5 Senses and the Human Body. In 4th grade students study geology through cooking and create sedimentary sandwiches and metamorphic muffins.  Mulberry students grow everything from fresh herbs for the mini-farmer’s market around Thanksgiving and lettuce for the kindergarteners to nibble during Garden Club.  The preschoolers collect food scraps from each classroom once a week and add them to a compost pile that  a previous class of 5th Graders built out of pallets.  

Mulberry provides the experiences and understanding that students can use as foundational learning for life-long healthy habits.  Research shows that children who grow healthy food are more likely to eat it.  The students start seeds in the greenhouse, transplant plants to the garden, harvest the produce, and cook recipes in the kitchen.    

The Mulberry School Cooking and Gardening program values community, diversity, engagement, collaboration, self knowledge, and integrity.   The teachers at our school focus on the whole child (social, emotional, physical, intellectual, creative).  We emphasize creativity, critical thinking, problem solving and conflict resolution through multi-sensory, hands-on learning opportunities.