School Gardens
School Gardens
The California Department of Education launched “A Garden in Every School” initiative in 1995. This initiative is an effort to promote education in nutrition, health, science, and even math. These different sciences can be combined in a school garden setting to teach kids to think critically and to learn new skills. Several studies have shown that school gardens can be really helpful for shifting children’s nutritional practices:
- A 2017 evaluation of FoodCorps conducted by the Tisch Center for Food, Education, and Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University found that in schools that provide frequent, high-quality opportunities for hands-on nutrition learning, students eat up to three times more fruits and vegetables at school lunch — regardless of whether or not that food was grown in the garden.
Why do gardens have such an impact on children’s eating habits?
- Unlike lectures or worksheets on healthful practices, gardens provide an experiential, hands-on learning environment. Working in a garden is a real-world activity; it engages students and encourages them to explore and reason independently.
- While most children receive only 3.4 hours of nutrition education a year, maintaining a school garden necessitates that nutrition lessons become a consistent, built-in part of students’ educational experience, says Eva Ringstrom, director of impact at FoodCorps. Research has shown that it takes between 35 and 50 hours of nutrition education a year to change kids’ preferences over the long term, she says.
- That repeated exposure can also build the emotional connections to food that are essential to behavior change. When children spend weeks or months growing their food, they feel proud of and connected to it — which is key to trying new dishes with an open mind.
Check out the resources and information on school gardens from the California Native Plant Society here.
Interested in getting a school garden going at your school, but not sure where to find the money? Check out the information here from the School Garden Support Organizations Network on the different sources of funds you can use to build and sustain your school garden.