Impacts and Lessons Learned from the “Growing a Garden 101” School Garden Project

A year-long school garden program funded by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Education Grant was developed and implemented to determine if student’s environmental stewardship would increase as a result of participation in outdoor learning environments, namely school gardens. Eleven schools (middle and high school level) that did not have a school garden program were recruited for the project. One to two teachers from each school attended a full day school garden workshop. The teacher workshop included information ranging from designing a garden to garden construction, maintenance, planting schedules, a site visit to a school garden and curriculum to tie the garden to their classrooms.  Teachers were given pre and post workshop surveys as well as an end of the year survey to determine their comfort levels in teaching a new subject area. Teachers returned to their individual schools with technical horticulture information and $700.00 in supplies needed to start a small garden.  Participating students were given pre and post Children Attitudes Towards the Environment (CATES) surveys to assess their environmental stewardship levels both before and after participation in the school garden. Each school was visited twice during the year and regular email correspondence occurred between the teachers and the program investigator. In addition to individual correspondence, participating teachers received a quarterly school garden newsletter highlighting important garden information throughout the year. Results from the study indicated that after attending the workshop teachers were more confident in their ability to design and construct a garden space and also more confident in their knowledge of planting schedules. Although participating students scored significantly higher (P ≤0.05) on certain questions on the CATES survey their overall scores did not significantly increase. All 11 participating schools were successful in establishing and maintaining a garden. All 11 schools were successful in harvesting produce from their gardens. With the exception of one school all participating schools said they would continue growing the garden with students after the grant funded year and most had plans to expand the garden space.