By April Sorrow
University of
Georgia

A school garden can be a place to give students a hands-on understanding of how the world grows, something that can be foreign to their urban way of life, says a garden expert with the University of Georgia.

“Kids think vegetables come from Kroger,” said Bobby Wilson, a UGA Cooperative Extension agent in Fulton County. “School gardens give inner-city kids a real sense of where our vegetables come from. They haven’t tied the relationship between the land and the food together. Children can be taught to relate the food they eat to the plants they grow as they come to understand the roles of water, sun, soil and insects.”

Wilson helps coordinate school garden projects through the Atlanta Urban Gardening Program, a partnership between the UGA Extension in Fulton and Dekalb counties and local community groups.

“The garden becomes an educational tool,” he said. “Visits to the gardens are incorporated into the school day. The garden becomes an educational tool to teach math, literature, English, science.”

In Practice

Last spring, Wilson helped the College Park Homeowners Association establish a garden at the College Park Elementary School. Volunteers made it happen.

“It all fell into place,” said Desire Wareham, who coordinated the volunteers. “The community made the bins, donated the seeds and supplied the railroad ties.”

The school plans to use the garden as an outdoor classroom to teach students about ecology and conservation. The organic garden area has a composting bin.

“We want to use the garden to teach about sustainability, conservation, recycling and composting,” Wareham said. “We have to get serious about conserving and teach our children to be a little more conscious about the world around us. We need to teach our children to protect our world.”

For the past 16 years, West Manor Elementary School in Atlanta has had a school garden program. It is used to teach students about plants and crops. The students plant vegetables and check them once a week, too.

“There are lots of lessons to be learned in the garden,” said Cynthia May, the school’s principal. “The children learn how a seed grows into a plant. They are so excited to watch it grow.”

Most of the students who entered the garden at the school didn’t know that vegetables grew in the ground. Before leaving for the summer break, students planted carrots and peanuts to pick when they return in the fall.

“They are gaining a basic understanding of how plants grow and a respect for the land,” May said.

The ownership the student feels for the plants they grow can help change eating habits, Wilson said.

“If a kid has an opportunity to grow a carrot, they may start to eat them,” Wilson said. “I’ve seen schools grow salad and bring it into the cafeteria. The children would start eating them because they had a hand in growing it.”

(April Sorrow is a news editor with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)