Growing Together: Open Forum

Hi Gardeneers, 

Does anyone have ideas or materials or suggestions for a student garden visioning activity?

I've attached an example of a quick worksheet we drafted up.

Thank you,

Attachment(s)

Garden Planning Activity.pdf   428 KB 1 version

Hi Christina! 

What a great way to engage the kids and get them excited about their school garden. I am not sure what ages you work with, but if this doesn't quite fit, you may be able to modify this STEM garden design activity.

At some schools, I have seen activities where all the kids submitted designs and concepts from the designs were used for the actual build. Have fun with this. I am sure the kids will. 

Happy Gardening!

I've used 1" grid paper and let them design their own plot for 3-sisters gardens!  Love you idea!

I'm attaching a couple of the best ones that 4th graders designed.

Thank you so much for sharing these samples Hope!  I love the idea of using the larger grid graph paper.  Were they trying to draw them to a specific scale? 

I'm an Extension Coordinator under SNAP-Ed. We have a weekly 'garden club' activity at the Boys and Girls Club for K-5 Feb-Oct and twice monthly Nov-Jan. Some days are just too cold to be in the garden for 3 hours with kids. We have been planning some indoor activities and one will be designing their garden bed. We use square foot gardening. I subscribe to the Garden Planner @ https://gardenplanner.almanac.com/ and keep track of our garden efforts. I'm going to print out 'garden beds' for them to plan on. Also they are going to use old seed catalogs to choose what they want to plant. Then they can glue them on the one foot square. This will give us the opportunity to talk about a variety of things to keep in my when designing a garden. I attached an overall view of our current garden space.

Attachment(s)

11.30.2023 What-s growing.pdf   423 KB 1 version

Inviting students to be part of the visioning process is so important, so I love that you started this thread, Christina! We held a student garden design contest to get ideas for building our school garden, and I've attached the flyer we created. Student ideas (and teacher ideas) were then given to the landscape designer to reference for creating the actual garden design. 

Attachment(s)

Student Design Contest.pdf   455 KB 1 version

We held a school wide design contest and narrowed it down to 4 winners.  We then chose 1 item from each design to incorporate.  This included raised beds, a beautiful bench, a pollinator garden and a scarecrow.  It was such a great way to get interest and excitement from the entire student population!  We also gave each of the 4 winners plants from our first harvest;  lettuce, figs, and radishes!

What a great idea to get everyone involved!  The more that happens, the more they will become involved and take ownership.  Great work!

Hi Christina,

I teach first graders. We have 5 garden boxes. We start after Valentine's Day by reading picture books about vegetables. We make lists and draw and write about our favorites.

In early March, we enjoy looking through seed catalogs and cutting out our favorites to make dream boards.

I try to order seeds by St. Patrick's Day. When they arrive, I write how many fit in a square and copy the front of the packets for as many squares as we plan to have.

At the beginning of planting week we go out into the hall and decide where we think things should go in the boxes. The teachers tape them to the wall boxes, our key to the boxes outside. Later that week they go into the hall to draw what they think that box will look like when the plants grow.

Then it's time to choose! It is probably the most exciting day next to planting day. They get 3 labels with their name on them. They get to go into the hall 3 times to choose the things they will plant. They draw and write about their 3 things.  We plant around Earth Day.

To promote shared care of the garden, families are asked to sign up to 'help and harvest' at least one bi-weekly time slot, during the summer.

We have several harvest activities that the first and second graders do together in August. I feel like our plan gets better every year. This was last year's plan and it worked really well!

Hi Christina,

I am doing a LEGO garden design contest -- it requires some money and work, but purchasing plant shapes, veggies, fruits, green plot blocks, stems (I did it off ebay and then bought some individual pieces off the LEGO website). Then, we vote on the garden beds and implement one in the garden!