Resource Library

Garden-based education is for everyone! As garden education professionals we have a responsibility to our students to make the amazing learning that happens around a garden bed accessible and engaging to all of our students. In 2016 we set out to increase our ability to include learners with diverse learning needs through the adaptation of our educational practices, materials, and curriculum. This packet is a compilation of the information we learned through this 12-month project. We hope it can be of use to other garden educators.

This innovative resource, created in partnership with City Blossoms, is informed by the work of their Youth Entrepreneurship Cooperative (YEC) program. It is complete with templates and tools to support anyone interested in connecting high school youth with gardens and entrepreneurship skill-building.

WHAT YOU WILL FIND INSIDE: This workbook includes in-depth insights from City Blossoms staff, who have committed more than seven years to growing the YEC program. This resource gives insight into City Blossoms' philosophy for: recruiting participants; forming local partnerships; designing a safe and inviting meeting space; and launching a youth-led cooperative business. This workbook is filled with guiding questions to assist others in developing their own unique adaptation of this program.

Developed by educators at Rooted, this is a short guide to getting started in the garden, for educators looking to begin gardening but overwhelmed by the amount of information out there! Plants Want to Grow includes a guide to climate zone maps, reading seed packets, and transplanting your baby seedlings into the garden. 

Some information in this guide is specific to gardening in Wisconsin but most of the information is applicable to any new or beginner gardener. 

School gardens are an integral part of farm to school programs and offer a multitude of educational opportunities. This fact sheet offers steps and considerations for starting a school garden, including: collaboration, goals and design, funding, planting, maintaining, supplies, curriculum and benefits.

Looking for a nature based homeschooling curriculum that’s exciting, easy to use, and created by expert educators? How about monthly videos, activities, and live classes? 

The Home Garden Classroom: Kids and Adults Learning & Gardening Together is a fun “edutainment” subscription that's a convenient, supportive, and affordable way to integrate STEM and garden based learning experiences into your child’s education. This curriculum, created by professional educators, is geared toward kids aged 5-10, aligns with NYS Common Core standards, and is guaranteed to bring joy and wonder into the lives of you and your little ones!

Celebrating Seasonality: Wisconsin-Grown Recipes for the Early Childhood Setting is a collection of twelve child-friendly recipes for the ECE setting that feature seasonal fruits and vegetables. These fun breakfast, lunch, and snack recipes promote the use of Wisconsin-grown produce in all ECE settings. Recipes are scaled for 8 and 25 servings and include serving sizes for different ages groups and CACFP crediting information. Celebrating Seasonality also includes information to help you find more local foods, a seasonality chart of Wisconsin crops, interviews with Wisconsin farmers, and stories from Wisconsin ECE sites serving local foods.

Celebrating Seasonality in available in both English and Spanish and features universal recipes using produce available in many geographic regions.

To help grow a classroom of thriving students, the new Junior Master Gardener - Early Childhood Learn, Grow, Eat & Go curriculum combines rich plant/garden learning, food exposure, fun brain- & body-boosting physical activities, AND novel parent/school community engagement in a fun, teacher-friendly format!

Save planning time with this step-by-step, 4 week unit that equips teachers with daily engaging lessons, group activities, and journal prompts that lead your class to create a simple, thriving vegetable garden. Weekly featured songs, literature connections, classroom garden kitchen recipes, innovative family engagement tools, and effective center resources complement learning and maximize benefits to students.

Faculty from Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and University of Nebraska - Lincoln Extension, created this curricula with support from Head Start teachers, kindergarten teachers, and content experts in the field of early childhood development. This multifaceted garden, nutrition, and physical activity curriculum is specially designed for teachers of 4 & 5-year-old children.

Learn, Grow, Eat & GO! is a curricula of the International Junior Master Gardener program. Created by Extension faculty/staff, teachers, nutrition and gardening experts, this multifaceted evidenced-based curricula integrates gardening, nutrition, healthy eating and physical activity into an academically rich curricula.

Through a linear set of hands-on, proven lessons, students will gain understand how plants grow and how plants provide for people's needs. The 10-week (2 lessons/week) unit of study will step a class through the process of establishing a garden, growing and eating from the garden, and integrates math, science, reading, and social studies into the curricula. Curricula, classroom sets of student garden journals, and accompanying children's literature books utilized within the curricula are available for purchase through the Junior Master Gardener website. Additionally, sample lessons, garden kitchen recipe videos, individual student garden journal pages, parent support materials and other resources are available for free through the website. The entire LGEG curricula, garden kitchen recipes, student garden journals, and parent letters are available in both English and Spanish.

This curricula was evaluated through a USDA AFRI grant for obesity prevention in children and all content was pilot tested by teachers, volunteers, and youth educators. Details on this longitudinal study and behavioral outcomes can be found on the research section of the website. Content experts related to youth education, horticulture, nutrition, and parenting provided review of content.

This K-5 curriculum from National Wildlife Federation was designed to engage students in learning about pollinator habitats, the connections between plants and animals, and our role in the environment. It is a placed-based curriculum which allows students to learn about biodiversity, ecosystems and habitats through direct experience and observation. The culmination is the creation of their own schoolyard pollinator habitat.

The curriculum is organized by season, beginning in September. The lessons reflect what is happening in nature and take advantage of opportunities for field observation. Although it says "Growing A Wild NYC" this curriculum is useable in any urban environment.