Garden as hangout space

Posted on January 26, 2013 by kidsingardens

In the intial brainstorming about the garden at the junior high (“the Living Room”), it was agreed that one of the major objectives for this space was to create a green, inviting garden space in which kids would want to hang out. To this end, we wrote a grant for a BBQ, six tables, and 8 benches. They arrived right before vacation, and last Sunday afternoon a team of kids, parents, staff (and staff spouses!) put them in place.

Poles were sunk in the ground to keep the tables steady and in place.

Benches were set throughout the garden for extra seating.

Volunteers are the first to try out the benches!

A few benches are also placed around campus.

Volunteer students also try them out!

Look at this brand new social space! Let the hanging out begin!

Thank to everyone who came out and worked to improve this space for the junior high students!

Blog anniversay, by the numbers

Posted on December 20, 2012 by kidsingardens

As of today, years I have been blogging: 1

Degree of change in my view toward the value of blogging in this last year: 180

Number of views in the last year: 9,458

Number of people who have signed on for every e-mail, aka “followers”: 83

Number of posts: 85

Days per week I posted (mostly): 2

Number of comments: 562

Chances that the top three commenters are related to me: 100%

Views of most popular post (“Curating a classroom”): 518

Views of least popular post (“Adopt the garden for the summer”): 11

Number of views on most popular day (January 23rd): 125

My age in the photo of aforementioned post that garnered the most interest : 5

On a scale from 1 to 10, degree to which I’m still excited about school gardens: 10

I appreciate all of you for tuning in and cheering me on in the last year. My writing life has never been more fun and consistent, and I have you—my audience–to thank.

To celebrate the past year, I’d like to bump up a couple of my favorite posts that I wrote early in the year and that have been a bit buried:

The Table

Three reasons to invite your community into the garden

Why I love the daffodil show in Julian

Thanks for coming by! See you next year.

Indoor gardening activity: rosemary wreaths

Posted on December 13, 2012 by kidsingardens

I experimented with making rosemary wreaths for our sale on Saturday, and we sold every one of them. Today was threatening rain, wind and temperatures in the 50’s (note: this is cold in California), so I put together an indoor lesson about rosemary for University of Wednesday.

First I harvested about 400-500 sprigs of rosemary from my yard. (Like the laundry basket?) I also cut 10 inch lengths of floral wire, and 24 pieces of 20 inch thicker gauge wire. I also gathered spools of ribbons.)

Beforehand I popped a whole lot of popcorn with olive oil and fresh rosemary.

After talking a little bit about the history and uses of rosemary, we tied the mound of sprigs at each table into threes with floral wire, and then wound the clusters to the wire circles they shaped with the thicker wire. Students finished the wreaths with ribbons/raffia, and we dined on popcorn.

For the last five minutes we took a quick garden walk and identified the rosemary bushes in three different locations. After working with them, touching them, smelling them, tasting them—they were easy to identify. Students happily went home with their wreaths—this one as a hair piece!

Farewell chain link fence!

Posted on October 31, 2012 by kidsingardens

In creating a passageway from the Hubbell Gate to the junior high, we recently removed a whole lot of chain link fence. This is what it looked like before:

Here’s another view:

We created a large opening, bringing the apple trees into the garden. Then we chose to replace the fence with something less industrial and two feet shorter. First the fence came down.

And was replaced with this:

Photo courtesy of Jeff Holt

Once replaced, everything changed. We now have an unobstructed view of Volcan Mountain, our beloved wilderness reserve, and the adjacent junior high. The junipers that seemed pinned back by the former high fence in the corner now seem like a neighboring forest. We can get to the apple trees to care for and harvest them. It feels bigger, lighter, more friendly, and like it has always been there.

The whole story in 8 minutes

Posted on October 17, 2012 by kidsingardens

Recently I made this imovie about the entire garden project for a grant proposal. I think it tells the story quite succinctly, and I hope you’ll enjoy it! (By the way, it has been a HUGE week in the garden with lots of great stories to tell but I’ll have to wait to recover from it all to tell them. Good stuff coming!)

Whole Foods Market said “yes”

Posted on September 8, 2012 by kidsingardens

Senior garden ambassadors met me before school to play with these two gadgets:

Hand-cranked apple peeler, corer and slicer

Dehydrator

We cut apples, dehydrated them all day, and served them at the Taste Test cart at lunch.

Ambassadors get off the bus and work with me until the bell rings

And soon, this whole process is going to be much, much better. You can see that we are prepping the food at the lunch tables. Do-able but pretty inconvenient. No table or electric outlet or sink to rinse fruit and veggies.

A while back Susi and I sent a grant proposal to Whole Foods Market, asking for an outdoor “kitchen island” to prep garden produce. ~~After obsessively checking their website for months~~ we found out this past summer that we won the money! It’s going to be built soon, so once again, I will show you the “before” shot so you can appreciate it when it goes in. This is probably the last unimproved piece of real estate in the garden!

Garden G.A.T.E.

Posted on April 25, 2012 by kidsingardens

This spring I was asked to create afterschool curriculum for G.A.T.E. students (a “gifted and talented” designation based on test scores.) In March we did a series on Greek and Latin roots, and last week we began a unit called “Garden G.A.T.E.”

The garden currently has two gates (this one and this one.) A third gate is underway by the world-renowned artist James Hubbell. This is a jaw-droppingly wonderful development and deserves a series of posts all by itself. Stay tuned on that one.

To prepare students to hear from Mr. Hubbell next week and get them excited about this soon-to-arrive art piece, we had an interactive slideshow on gates. With enthusiasm, the students responded to photos of our current gates, a drawing of the Hubbell gate and images of gates from around the world. With each entranceway, we looked at the questions 1) What does it look like? 2) What is its story? and 3) What is its purpose? As we talked back and forth, we developed a running list of words that describe what gates can do: frame a view, direct traffic, commemorate an event, serve as visual interest, be a focal point in a landscape, welcome or exclude, stand as important symbols….

To process all of the rich visuals and descriptive vocabulary, Marisa then asked them to do a 15 minute drawing of a gate and give it a name. The students could imagine a real gate they wanted to build (to frame a favorite view) or a metaphorical one in their lives (such as a doorway between elementary school and junior high.) Here’s one quick sketch I really like by 6th grade student, Bradon Hoover:

Thank you to the artist and family for permission to post!

Monday morning garden report

Posted on April 11, 2012 by kidsingardens

Two years ago I started a program called Garden Ambassadors. Fifth grade and sixth grade students apply at the beginning of the school year, with a written application and interview, to be garden representatives. All year long they receive special training from me as they assume certain leadership responsibilities related to the school garden.

One of their jobs is giving the “Monday Morning Garden Report.” Every Monday morning one of our principals welcomes children back to school on the school-wide intercom and goes over relevant information for the week. Then the garden ambassador takes the mic (phone):

Here is this week’s report:

Good morning! My name is Ethan, and I am a sixth grade garden ambassador.

Spring has come to the garden. The table has a fresh coat of stain, the tulips are blooming and new plantings are going in. In the habitat garden, there is newly planted lavender, monkey flower, butterfly weed and germander—all plants that attract butterflies. Along the riverbed are also three new, native plants: deer grass, mountain savory and “blue pozo” sage. You might also notice the wildflowers are starting to come up in Mrs. Dawson’s bed too. Finally, some strawberries were transplanted to the left of the pergola.

Thank you for observing the “caution tape” at the far end of the garden. This space is being readied for a beautiful gate being created by the world-renowned artist James Hubbell.

That’s all for now! See you in the garden!

Curating a classroom

Posted on February 23, 2012 by kidsingardens

Classrooms can be beautiful. The first time I realized this was when I visited my friend Drew Ward’s high school English classroom. He calls it the “MOLA”—Museum of Language Arts. His walls are black and covered in colorful empty frames. At the beginning of the school year he challenges his students to write something worthy of hanging in the MOLA.

It made an impression on me, and I think it was in the back of my mind when I was recently working on a project in the Jaguar Den. The Jaguar Den is a open, multi-use room that has been re-carpeted and painted, awaiting decoration. Among other things, it will be a venue for indoor garden activities during our cold months (such as the vocabulary-building Garden Bingo we played on a rainy NEAT day.)

“Kids with Cameras” is a collaborative after school program involving the school garden. (You can read about it here.) We enlarged and matted the kids’ best photos from our Volcan Mountain trip for a community reception. After the photos were on display at the library for two weeks, the Character Council (charged with designing this new space) decided to have the framed prints hung in the Jaguar Den to create a “gallery feel.” In this way, students’ work is exhibited, and the photos contribute to a clean and beautiful look we are going for in this room.

BEFORE

AFTER

Thank you to my artist friend Ann for arranging and hanging these!

To-do lists and garden bon bons

Posted on February 8, 2012 by kidsingardens

If I unscrolled my garden “to-do list,” I am certain it would roll out my front door and down my street. In any garden—especially a school garden as ambitious as ours—there is simply a massive amount of things to do.

Last week, I received two little gifts (I call them “bon bons”) in the midst of all the garden work. One is that I took my son’s kindergarten on a sensory tour of the garden. No fancy lesson plan or exciting activity—I simply asked the kids to quietly walk through the garden. Then I asked them to name something they “saw, smelled or heard” that was 1)new, 2)beautiful or 3) interesting. The kids were coming out of their skin in excitement as we took time out for sheer discovery. I came back to class, after three rounds of little people, just a little bit exhilirated.

Another story: On this blog I can check my “site stats.” Every day I can see how many views I’ve had, what posts folks are reading and even what specific “search engine terms” people typed in that led them to my blog. Readers, apparently, have found me by googling “mosaic art” and “photography and placemaking” and of course “school gardens.”

Last week I saw that someone arrived at my blog because he/she typed in the phrase:

“positive things that happen to people going to school.”

Bon bon.

I am reminded that the cure for feeling overwhelmed by– many things really— is often immersing yourself in the reasons you are doing all the little tasks in the first place. Remembering the vision at the core of your work, you then let that joy propel you into the next day and the next task.