Garden Fashion: Say yes to the t-shirt

Posted on January 20, 2016 by kidsingardens

I know what you’re thinking…cool season vegetables and microscope work and educational outcomes are all very well and good, but what are garden educators wearing this season?

It’s a slow news week in the garden, so let’s take a peek into my garden-forward wardrobe:

This tee represents the genre of conference souvenir. You’ll remember I loved my time at the Edible Schoolyard, so I love remembering it with this rooster.

Related to the conference shirt is the “organizations I support” look.

Ripped from Friday Night Lights, this tee makes people think I am a football fan. Which I am not. But I loved that show, and I love this sentiment.

Found on an internet search for gardening shirts. I couldn’t resist adding one more take on the “keep calm” craze.

Is there a day when we don’t need to remember this? A gift from a friend purchased at Sherry Horton’s gorgeous Julian shop, E. Barrett General Store.

My husband went to Peru and brought back a t-shirt with a drawing of a stuffed pepper, a local delicacy apparently. True love.

Purchased on the clearance table at the Monticello gift shop. I guess I’m one of the few that couldn’t resist a drawing of an eggplant— the most beautiful plant, according to Jefferson.

Another trip tee—this one from the Washington Mall during cherry blossom season.

Local food t-shirts work well in the garden.

Let’s not forget the event t-shirt—my go-to baseball-style shirt for our annual Food Day celebrations.

Naturally, I have a couple school spirit numbers:

And I’ve saved my favorite for last: a Tracey Allen original. This is “Choose Kindness.” See her lovely designs here!

In closing, I should mention that any of the above shirts can be paired with jeans and tennis shoes. Or a funky skirt and sandals. Hats optional, minimal accessories. The options are endless in the world of garden fashion!

Why is Mrs. Tree crying?

Posted on October 22, 2015 by kidsingardens

During garden lessons, I try to stay open to unscripted moments. If an unusual insect shows up, if pods have just erupted in seeds, if a child sees something beautiful that has escaped my notice, I want to be ready to stop everything for the teachable moment. It happens a lot in the garden.

At the beginning of the year, I hung a tree face on one of the junipers and led the students by it on the way out of the garden, waiting for squeals and pointed fingers. After seeing Mr. Tree, they speculated that Mrs. Tree might be the next one to show up. Show up she did.

When we discovered her a couple weeks later, one of the girls told me she needed a “neckwus.” I agreed and sure enough, during our next class, we noticed that Mrs. Tree was all blinged out.

We got closer. And as we looked at her, I noticed there was a single, silvery drip of tree sap right under her eye. Look!

Suddenly we had the most perfect creative writing/thinking prompt as I asked students, “Why do you think Mrs. Tree is crying?”

And I couldn’t have made up the next three comments:

Student #1: She’s crying because she’s so happy to live in the school garden.

(gulp)

Student #2: She’s crying because Mr. Tree gave her a necklace!

(so sweet!)

And then Student #3:

She’s crying because her necklace is too tight!

(hahahahaha!)

Plant espionage

Posted on March 12, 2013 by kidsingardens

Most of my Master Gardener public outreach hours are going to school gardens. Recently, however, a service opportunity came up I couldn’t resist: spying on nurseries to document how many invasive plants they have for sale.

Ok, not really spying. It’s all done in the open as part of the non-profit organization Plant Right’s attempt to take “data collected from this survey to track California’s retail market for invasive garden plants over time. Having this information allows PlantRight to engage the nursery industry in building an effective program to stop the sale of these plants and replace them with environmentally safe alternatives. The survey itself is a data collection effort and not an outreach initiative.” They asked Master Gardeners for help, and I gladly watched the webinar and signed up for a nursery in the general area of my other Saturday errands.

Imagine my disappointment when the training webinar said “No disguises necessary.”

In reality, I strolled around–a plainclothes amateur botanical detective— with my Plant ID guide of 18 targeted invasives to find. I’m happy to report that the big box store to which I was assigned had none of them. We were supposed to record other plants in the genus, though, so I jotted down some notes about a broom and vinca minor (vinca major was on the blacklist), took some photos and submitted my notes to their site. A good afternoon’s work for a native plant vigilante.

To learn more about this cool effort, see http://www.plantright.org