Vision

The vision was to create a garden with students to build community. The garden would be an incentive to get students to come to school more, take responsibility for their plants, and in the end, have food to learn to cook and have healthy food options available to them. Growing traditional medicines is also essential for the staff and students to utilize and gift to community members. Planting, caring for, and maintaining our garden has therapeutic benefits and strengthens emotional and interpersonal skills.

Action

We started off by making a list of things we like to cook or make at school, such as stews and smoothies. We constantly add spinach or kale to smoothies and potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, etc. to stews so we decided to plant those first in our new hydro grow station. From there, we transplanted the pants to the soil and set up the grow station. Students worked together with staff to care for and watch our garden grow! Students could add spinach and kale to their smoothies from our garden quickly because they grew fast! Students have asked to bring plants home to start their own gardens outside with their families at their houses.

Reflection & Celebration

Love that my students had this positive opportunity to work together on this project and be excited about their successes. We hope to continue this project through the summer and into the future school years! We have gotten many compliments and questions that relate to our luscious garden. Everyone is always so eager and proud to discuss it. I’m most proud that students have learned basic gardening skills that they want to bring home and teach their families. Students will bring home plants from our classroom garden to create their very own garden at home.