Friedrich Froebel opened his first Kindergarten in Blankenburg, Germany in 1837. He described children as tender, growing plants and their female teachers as their gardeners, creating an environment of optimum growth through play.
History of Kindergarten
Imagine the advantages of giving children the opportunities to become the gardeners of their own plants! Cultivating an environment where vegetables and flowers can grow lets students become the teachers of one another, as they learn by doing.
Study of School Gardens
As great as all the reasons outlined in the above article are, I host a Garden Club at my school to witness the excited faces of the students who see vegetables growing from the seeds they planted themselves.
I am committed to facilitating a garden at my school. In 2013, another teacher helped me procure materials for a 6'x6' raised bed garden, framed in straw bales, but it was vandalized and destroyed within a week. This year, I hosted a small Garden Club, using Dig In! curriculum from the USDA. We planted green beans, wax beans, lettuce and a tomato seeds in 4 medium sized pots and set them on the west side of the school, directly underneath a video camera. We were able to eat the lettuce before freezing temperatures ended our experiment. In the Spring of 2015, I plan to add more, larger pots to expand our container garden while applying for grants to build another raised bed garden in view of the security camera.
If your local school doesn't have a garden, what are you going to do about it?
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