Getting smarter every year: the daffodil show

Posted on March 22, 2016 by kidsingardens

We have hundreds of daffodils planted all around our garden, and we keep adding more every year. Every March our town of Julian hosts a daffodil show which is truly wonderful! (You can read my rapturous past reports here and here.)

Though students have planted most of the daffodils, I usually picked our prizewinning blooms the first couple years the school garden was represented in the youth division of the show. Then I got a little smarter and had the kids go out and pick the flowers. This year I was even smarter and put the whole process in the students’ hands: I not only had the students choose the flowers, after a short tutorial on how to do so properly, but I also had them key out the flowers using a laminated guide with flower part diagrams and division breakdowns. They also arranged the blooms in show vases and filled out the submission cards. Our wonderful Garden Beneficial for the day, Jenny graciously offered to drop them off at Town Hall, ready to enter. And like every year, we brought home a handful of ribbons—but this year, the ownership of the flowers and the garden and our participation in the show was better than ever—no surprise. School garden cardinal rule: get kids’ hands on everything!

The end-of-school wrap-up, kinda

Posted on June 15, 2013 by kidsingardens

School’s out! A moment celebrated every year by the “waving to the busses” pulling out for the last time until mid-August.

And so, things were also finishing up in the garden, kinda.

I did a bunch of make-up garden lessons (on peas! surprise!) and came to love the book “First Peas to the Table” by Susan Grigsby about Thomas Jefferson’s annual contest with his neighbors.

We did a lot of mulberry eating.

My senior ambassadors worked on a mosaic stepping stone that will stay in the garden, acknowledging their two years of service.

On the second day of summer, we held our (belated) annual tea party for Administrative Professionals day. I tried to organize it on the actual holiday in May, or thereabouts, but discovered that stealing away all seven of our administrative staff at the same time might inadventently make the school crumble in on itself. These wonderful people make it happen every day, and I love that we’re on our fourth year of celebrating them in the garden.

The new PLUS team (junior high leadership) also came out for a 2-hour service project during the first week of summer, helping to spread woodchips, deadhead herbs and flowers, tear out peas, put in tomatoes and squash, mulch, tidy up the breast cancer awareness ribbon garden, and water.

This is what the ribbon looks like when the daffodil and tulips are out of season. It needs a lot of tidying to keep the shape and outline, made with red bark and white stones.

Ta-dah! What were peas are now tomatoes, the Harvest of the Month for August and September.

And finally, I set up the summer watering schedule for our volunteer families, made exactly 100% easier this year by the fact that my friend and fellow Master Gardener put in timed irrigation to ALL of our edibles. Now we just have to water the ornamentals a couple times a week with rainwater. Thank you dear Mary!

Garden traditions: a tea party for our staff

Posted on May 9, 2012 by kidsingardens

For any school starting a garden, I would recommend the early implementation of traditions. One we started our first year was throwing a tea party on Administrative Professionals Day. Seven beloved staff members receive an invitation: