How do I get started?

L* B*

Hi Rhonda,
There are plenty of resources on the net, to start you off, many of which
are listed on the American Community Gardening Assoc. website Links page:
<http://www.communitygarden.org/links/index.html#Children>

Here are some highlights:
Kids Gardening 
<http://www.kidsgardening.com/>

For native plants in the schoolyard, go to the Evergreen Foundation
<http://www.evergreen.ca/en/lg/lg.html>

The Chicago Botanic Gardens has just recently published an excellent guide,
The Chicago School Garden Initiative
<http://www.chicagobotanic.org/schoolgarden/index.html>

And for actual gardening  info, there's Junior Master gardeners:
<http://www.jmgkids.com/>

Green Teacher a wonderful magazine with great ideas
<http://www.greenteacher.com/>

A bit of practical advice:
1. start small, you can always get bigger but a big failure at the start
guarantees that you will never get much further
2. don't do it all by yourself. Get the school principal and the caretaker
staff on board at the beginning as well as parents and teachers.
3. Provide teachers with a binder of lesson plans and resources. If they
have never gardened before it will be too intimidating to even start. There
are lots of subject areas that can utilize the garden, not just the obvious
ones.
4. Children don't care how much is grown, how big the harvest is. For them
it's the process, not the product. Make it fun and imaginative.

Good luck,
Laura Berman

Manager, Community Gardening  & Urban Agriculture Program
FoodShare Toronto
238 Queen St. West
Toronto, ON
M5V 1Z7

tel: 416-392-6654
cell: 416-347-0774
fax: 416-392-6650
email: laura@foodshare.net
web: http://www.foodshare.net

> From: school_garden-admin@mallorn.com
> Reply-To: school_garden@mallorn.com
> Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 12:00:16 -0500
> To: school_garden@mallorn.com
> Subject: School_garden digest, Vol 1 #204 - 3 msgs
> 
> Message: 1
> From: "Rhonda Guinn" <rguinn@mounet.com>
> To: <school_garden@mallorn.com>
> Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 10:14:10 -0500
> boundary="----=_NextPart_000_000D_01C37396.72CF9040"
> Subject: [sg] How do I get started?
> 
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
> 
> ------=_NextPart_000_000D_01C37396.72CF9040
> Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> 
> I am new to this list serve and am a student teacher interested in =
> incorporating gardening in the school curriculum.  Does anyone have any =
> suggestions as to how I get this started?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> R Guinn

_______________________________________________
School_garden maillist  -  School_garden@mallorn.com
https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/school_garden