Organic Farmer Network: Network Discussion Summary

Topic: School Gardens

From Mark: “I've been down in Little Rock for the past two weeks working as a consultant for an inner-city 'edible schoolyard' program that is managed by my friend Pratt Remmel. But I am SO glad to be back in the deep countryside and out of the city;

My work at the schoolyard garden (Dunbar Garden Project) has been a success, giving us an income during February (Mike stays at the farm to tend to animals, greenhouse, etc.) and providing some much-needed assistance to the garden project personnel. An intern of ours from 1990 was key in helping to set up this garden, but left the project a few years ago, and the horticultural end of things began to deteriorate a bit. Children from the nearby grade school and junior high have scheduled classes there every 10 days or so, and the garden has a 3/4 time teacher (former elementary school teacher who loved the garden project) in addition to two full-time garden employees (paid by the Parks Dept.) who manage the horticultural end of things. My work there last year was to streamline the garden design for irrigation, map out the various garden sections, prune the fruit trees, and create a garden planting plan for the entire year that the staff could follow. This year, since the garden was given another acre addition to the site, they had me plan and implement an orchard and irrigation for the orchard, as well as continue planning the garden plantings based on last year's records.

I mention this because … this can be a very successful collaboration, in that the school garden folks have been able to tap into our 20 years of experience, and I've been able to bring in a needed income during a down period in winter. Many of these kids are seeing vegetables growing for the first time ever, and when you give them an egg from the henhouse, will ask, ‘Can you EAT this??’”

Tim: “Years ago I worked for Austin Community Gardens-- lots of job responsibilities but something that I enjoyed was building school gardens at one time 9 different schools. I did the teaching and all crops were vegetables of which they ate at school or took home. Some had raised beds throughout others had RR ties and quite elaborate in design to fit the school site. It was up to me to build and find materials and donations (some I went and salvaged). As I look back, all the early gardens were kept simple raised beds with trenches filled with leaves that worked as pathways so we had no dirty shoes in school. My later gardens were designed so that structure and some fruit trees were planted. I left that job to raise my kids but started a school garden down the street with again donations and planted as a low water xeriscape garden. Always consider a site to lessen the outside landscape for the school to maintain if you should leave. Look at those odd shapes where weed eating needs to be done.”