Gardening for all ages!

Over the past several months we have found an increasing number of schools that are encouraging their students to manage small gardens.

In addition – at home – my youngest, along with my wife, have expanded from being excellent home gardeners – to taking over 2 public garden plots in our community – to create vegetable gardens.  So, I am getting to see this both in my travels with students and teachers, and first hand in our home.

(The video below is from the White House kitchen garden – it is an excellent video and shows the great efforts of First Lady Michelle Obama in building this garden and sharing it with the community and the nation.)

It seems to me to be an excellent way for young people to learn about – the earth, climate change, food, responsibility for living things, enjoyment – away from the tv or i-pod, and much more – reading, measuring……eating properly.

And among our winners we have seen gardening at all levels:

First: At  the Academy for Global Citizenship founded by one of our Winners from the summer Sarah Elizabeth Ippel – the students – level k thru 3rd grade have an on campus garden.

Second: At Millikan Middle School the 6th grade science class – our winner two weeks ago – under the guidance of their amazing teacher Deb Woolford have a vegetable garden that they have built and manage.

Third: College – the recent clip we have posted from Lawrence University – features the campus garden in every discussion of the schools sustanibility, climate education efforts.

I am sure there are countless other examples around the nation.  Please let us know of any interesting school gardenig projects that might be worth posting about.