Growing Together: Open Forum

Week 2 of our Kids Garden Month "Let's Grow Together!" discussions! 

Last week you shared all the ways your garden supports your community.

This week's topic: How does the community support your garden or garden program? Do you have community volunteers? Did the community help build your garden? Do you have guest speakers or go on field trips? Let us know!



Each Tuesday, we'll start a thread related to the Kids Garden Month theme and anyone who responds is entered into a drawing to win a $50 gift card to Gardener's Supply Company! Preview the questions for the next few weeks and check out the kids contest here.

------------------------------
Amelia Dupuis
Kids Garden Community Manager
KidsGardening
------------------------------

We have the best community!  Every summer we have school families sign up to tend the garden for a week at a time. They get to harvest whatever is ready in return for watering, weeding and tending to the garden. Without our community helpers it would be very hard for us to successfully garden through the summer.

------------------------------
Anne Baines
School Farm 2 Fork teacher
Acworth, GA
------------------------------

Our community supports our garden because we are part of our town's community garden!  We were very lucky to collaborate with the community garden from the start, and continue to build that partnership!  My students are requested to complete tasks in the garden, which they are very eager to do usually.  When we need anything, we always have community to help us out too! We have a wonderful community program, called STEPS, that is very generous with our school portion of the garden.  In the summer time our local library has story hour in the garden and helps to maintain our garden beds too.  Our school garden would not be as great as it is without our community!

------------------------------
Patty Parsons
------------------------------

Hi!  We are just getting started with planning a school garden.  However, the reason why we are starting a garden is due to student interest after we grew plants together in the classroom and at home.  Students each got a small pot with seeds to grow a vegetable at home and we grew plants in the classroom as part of a science unit.

------------------------------
Amy Truemper
------------------------------

We are in the beginning stages of our garden. This summer the students with community service will maintain the garden. Hopefully, we will gain some volunteers and also share our produce and herbs with the community as well as the school.

------------------------------
Tami Kuhfal
------------------------------

This spring our elementary school started a garden club!  We haven't had a garden club in several years and the garden area grew neglected.  To get that space back to being beautiful, I sponsored a garden club!  To get funding for the club I used Donor's Choose at the beginning of the school year and the project was fully funded!  I have a teacher volunteer that helps with the club every time we meet.  The kids meet with us and we started some seeds indoors with grow lights!  In May we will transfer the seedlings out doors.

------------------------------
Laura Franz
------------------------------

Since this is the first year we are growing a garden, we don't know what community support we need.  A kind gentleman heard about us starting a garden and donated three beautiful raised garden beds.  Our facility is located on campus and we hope to go over to tour their hydroponics shop and visit their campus garden.  We also had a generous Boy Scout build us a large octagon picnic table to add to our garden area for the children to use as they explore the school garden.

------------------------------
Cassandra Treese
Selinsgrove PA
------------------------------

Our garden is really enjoyed by young kids, they love looking at the worms working their magic in the compost bin. Indeed, some of them like to pick up the worms.
We invited some middle school children to come to harvest and they had so much fun they decided to have a jalapeno-eating contest. We host an Active Older Adults program at our Y where the garden is and they love going in and choosing fresh vegetables to take home and enjoy. Our garden is really starting to draw attention in the community and we have been approached by some local businesses to perform community service at our garden, while other businesses have supplied building materials. In addition, other people in the community are now volunteering their time to help, which can be very therapeutic for them. I'm proud of how far the garden has come in the time I've been taking care of it.

------------------------------
Elizabeth Shideler
Roanoke VA
------------------------------

After the garden got started, we began to reach out to the  community for support.  Kiwanis, Scouts, Americorp, Church groups and parents have helped build a compost bin, raised garden beds, a portable sink, benches, garden pathways and a greenhouse. The local grocery store provides schools with store gift cards and a set of lessons on the vegetable/fruit of the month.
In Sacramento, we are lucky to have lots of resources for field trips and guest speakers. Field trips include local farms, fish hatchery, nature centers by a river and by wetlands, UC Davis (30 minute drive) farm, arboreum, entomology museum, raptor center and pollinator garden, and Sacramento State University green houses. Guest speakers come from the dairy council, the nature center and the wetlands center (run by Fish and Wildlife) and a recycling center. 

------------------------------
Evelyn Margolin
(916)501-1173
------------------------------

We have a wonderful community. We have over 350 volunteers who help us do everything from maintaining the site trails and fighting invasive plants to leading educational programs and helping us write fundraising notes.  On top of our core volunteers, we also have other local artists, nonprofits, and companies who join us for one-off events  to offer special programming, donate food, or help us with special needs. We owe them all so much!

------------------------------
Whitney Zhang
------------------------------

Week 2 of our Kids Garden Month "Let's Grow Together!" discussions! Last week you shared all the ways ...
We have help / volunteers from Black Hawk Nutrition, Green Iowa Americorps, and Food Corps help with Garden lessons, planting, teaching about Hydroponics, and planting with the students.  They also have a watering schedule in the summer so I don't have to do it all.  Very blessed. 
Peterson & Tietz Flowers - donates vegetables plants when our grow gardens didn't do so well.  They are a partner in education with my school. 
Waterloo Schools employees help till the gardens, landscape help, and maintenance. 
I have had the BMG gravel personnel work with my students on figuring out how much rock we needed for the area. 
Sun shade company sent a representative to help us learn and order a shade. 
Community is awesome!  Parents / School Summer Daycare help us when needed. 

------------------------------
Ms. Carrie Taylor
Highland Elementary / EXPO ALC
Waterloo COmmunity Schools
------------------------------

A wonderful example of how we are better together is the partnership in Washington, DC between the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) and the Department of Parks and Recreation- Shared Roots.  There are loooong waiting lists for community garden plots and school gardens in need of care over spring and summer breaks.  Shared Roots connects gardens and people.  Check them out - https://osse.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/osse/page_content/attachments/Shared%20Roots%202023_Flyer.pdf

------------------------------
Lee Coykendall
------------------------------

Our garden beds were installed in 2016 (before I started working here) by volunteers from the Esperanza Neighborhood Project and the New Brunswick 4-H. Since then we have periodically had Rutgers students help with cleaning out the garden both to start off the growing season in the spring and to close the garden in the fall. Oftentimes parents of the children who participate in our K-6 Garden Club also assist during each of our sessions. We have teen volunteers in the summer who assist as well. In addition, last year a member of a local beekeepers club was a guest speaker. We have been very lucky thus far.

------------------------------
Karen Stuppi
Children's Librarian
New Brunswick Free Public Library
60 Livingston Avenue
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
------------------------------

We don't have a lot of parental involvement in the garden at this point but it is something I would like to work on expanding. Currently the 2nd grade families are invited in the fall for a Saturday workday where we clean out the summer crops and get ready for fall planting. I count teacher use of the garden for special lessons or in support of social impact goals as community support, as well. Overall, I am pleased with the level of support the garden currently enjoys though I do know that there is lots of room to grow.

------------------------------
[Lara] [Guerra]
[Science Teacher]
[The Hockaday School]
[Dallas] [Texas]
[lguerra@hockaday.org]
------------------------------

We have an awesome group of Master Gardener volunteers that work with 2nd and 4th grade classes.  They are working on regaining their pollinator garden and have enlisted help from a Masters level student at OSU to help with the Monarch garden.  Our community has yet to engage significantly with the school gardens.  We hope to improve our outreach this summer as our food garden is adjacent to our food service building which offers a Summer Food Program. 

------------------------------
Lynette McPherson
------------------------------

We've just started getting the community involved in our gardening efforst here at our North High School. We just started a partnership with the Liberty Prairie Farm, taking students to their farm to help with seed starting projects in a shared greenhouse. We have two summer school programs called Engineering a Sustainable Future and Farm to Fork where both classes work at the Farm as well as in our school gardens. Also, the community also helps to harvest our school gardens in the fall. I'm excited to see what new community engagement GNHS gets involved with in the future!

------------------------------
TLC (Tracey) Nielsen
Grayslake Community HS District 127
Grayslake IL
------------------------------

Our community children come everyday and help with our first year garden. We also help and receive education at our local farm.

------------------------------
Cindy Stutler
------------------------------

We were able to get local businesses to donate materials for our garden and then community members purchased garden plots in honor or in memory of a loved one, with a plaque affixed to the raised bed. Our Lil Chefs who use our garden produce in their cooking classes just made signs to hang on the fence surrounding the garden. Members of our community volunteer and help weed, clean, and water the garden, and also help harvest the produce. We were just awarded a grant from a local grocery store to continue to improve our garden and cooking program, and employees from a local bank are coming soon to help in the garden. We are fortunate to have so much community involvement and support for our garden.

------------------------------
Elizabeth Shideler
Roanoke VA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-21-2023 07:47:38 PM
From: Cindy Stutler
Subject: How does your community support your garden?

Our community children come everyday and help with our first year garden. We also help and receive education at our local farm.

------------------------------
Cindy Stutler
------------------------------

We share!  Our family owns CBRF homes for DD adults.  We all work together to grow, share.  Hands on is the best support we get! Learn, share, support! 

------------------------------
leann schiller
------------------------------

One way our community helps our garden is by volunteering their time, skills, and resources to help maintain and improve our school garden. We have had families donate the wood to help build raised beds, Boy Scouts replace timbers on our nature trail and spread gravel, donating soil to fill our raised beds. Our community gives so much to our garden.

------------------------------
Danielle Tipton
Parkway Elementary School
Boone NC
------------------------------