Client: Northern California Parent Magazine

On Friday afternoons at Proctor Terrace School in Santa Rosa, six children at a time burst through the gates of the school's garden area, anxious to partake in the splendor of the natural classroom. The children plumb the depths of the quiet garden setting, using their vivid imaginations to sketch a flower or to develop stories and poems. In this outdoor classroom, the disciplines of art, science and language arts merge effortlessly as children learn to cultivate an awareness and appreciation for the natural world around them. As with all gardens, meditation takes not only the form of quiet reflection but of the physical labor of dead heading flowers and pulling weeds. With the help of Mary Ellen Byrne, volunteer Life Lab Coordinator, each classroom has a hand in cultivating a portion of the 10 or so raised planter boxes, growing a mixture of bulbs, perennials, annuals and vegetables. By studying the natural rhythm of each plant's life cycle from seed to blossom to fruit, children soon discover that the food they eat originates in the earth, not the supermarket. In this natural classroom, dirt takes on a whole new meaning.

It is no wonder that school garden programs thrive in northern California where all the best in wine, agriculture and dining come together to form a strong regional identity. At the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, Carla Peterson, the Ag Education Coordinator, oversees a program which teaches science through gardening. By encouraging interested students and youth groups, including 4H, Scouts, and Boys and Girls Clubs to get their hands dirty, the Bureau hopes to increase agricultural literacy. Through gardening Peterson finds that, “Students not only learn to understand the many factors that go into growing, they also come to see that food encompasses the whole life cycle from birth to death.”

From planting sunflower seeds to determining PH levels in soils, gardening is at once deceptively simple and highly complex. Since not all teachers are gardeners as well, many have attended seminars offered by The Life Lab Science Program, which began in Santa Cruz in 1978. Taking advantage of how children actually learn by relating what children do in school to their real lives, the comprehensive science curriculum for K-5 offers a hands-on approach to science through gardening. Needless to say, The Life Lab and other similar curriculums are costly, and grants are necessary to make these programs available to schools.

For Life Lab Director, John Rojas, the garden at Edna Maguire Elementary in Mill Valley is self supportive. The school grows pumpkins and sells them at their annual harvest fair which makes well over $3,000, money the school puts back into the garden and education of the children. At Edna Maguire, teachers, parents and children are all a part of the garden and its success, with parents playing an integral role in the design and aesthetics. Some are landscape architects who have spent their energies and time making the garden very pleasing to the eye while others donate their time to assist the children in the garden. This program shows children the rewards inherent in working together as a community.

At Roseland Elementary School in Santa Rosa, the garden is the sum total of the healthy food/healthy body equation. In the recent past, two separate grants have allowed teachers to offer students at Roseland a comprehensive approach to science, nutrition and gardening. In 1996, a government-sponsored grant brought the basic tenants of good nutrition to students through in-classroom cooking. This year, the Garden Enhancing Nutrition Education Grant from the California Department of Education will be used to send two teachers and one cafeteria worker to the Life Lab training facility in Santa Cruz. The grant has also helped build eight 3’ X 8' planter boxes, each divided into thirds, allowing every class to work a section. The garden fits perfectly into a curriculum in which students have already learned to make healthy food choices. Growing their own food becomes the next logical step in the natural process from garden to table to health.

St. Helena Elementary School in Napa has received USDA Team Nutrition funds and finds the world famous Culinary Institute just down the road, an ideal partner in helping children make the connection between garden, classroom and cafeteria. Linda Maloney, Garden Project Coordinator and Kirby Blake Tubb, Food Services Director, work together to involve all grades in garden-related learning. Their showplace garden includes some 36 boxes and barrels filled with all manner of plants, including herbs used by food service staff to enhance flavor. Besides CI, the American Culinary Federation hosts on-site breakfast demonstrations, offering children healthy alternatives to empty-calorie sweets such as scrumptious caramelized bananas spilled over french toast or ice cream sundaes.

Through a coordinated effort that encompasses government agencies as well as the private sector, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Delaine Eastin, has championed the crusade for nutritionally-smart children. Armed with the latest research findings--a nutritionally unsound diet can hinder a child's ability to learn--Eastin hopes to put “a garden in every classroom” by the year 2000. Eastin’s passion for the program stems from a belief that children will make healthier food choices because, like every generation that has come before them, they have learned to grow what they eat.

While State grants continue to make many school gardens a reality, the daily work of the garden is accomplished the old fashioned way--by volunteers. Bringing to bear the knowledge of the great Luther Burbank, Cheryl Davis of Luther Burbank Gardens has helped transform many a wooly garden into a place of beauty. Joan Betts, a Certified Master Gardener specializing in children’s gardening, has donated countless hours to Santa Rosa elementary schools, as well as hundreds of plants from her own nursery which have in turn been donated to her by local area stores, including Home Depot, Payless, Emerisa Gardens, Homestead Gardens, Pro-Source Plant Service and Empire Nursery.

Betts says of the school gardening program, “It's not wasted time, but time spent reading, writing, measuring, and learning about proper nutrition.” In essence, it is time spent learning to nurture, a discipline whose limitless practical uses knows no boundaries.

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