City Helps Sow Seeds of Education in Gardening Program
Gardening requires more than simply sprinkling seeds onto soil--science, math and other academic skills are involved.
This is the lesson that students in Santa Monica public schools are taught as part of a city-sponsored gardening program run by a nonprofit group called Gardening Angels.
City officials are spending more than $50,000 to create gardens and irrigate them in the city’s 12 public schools. All the gardens should be completed by this time next year, officials said.
The educational applications of gardening are tremendous, said one teacher at the McKinley Elementary School. McKinley so far has the largest garden in the school district--55 feet by 150 feet.
“They learn about how things grow--the minerals, vitamins and other things that plants get from the soil,” said Mary Gilchrist-Brock, a special education instructional aide at McKinley. “We do math calculations--how much space do the plants need to grow and how much have they grown when we measure them? The students also write narratives describing what’s been happening in the garden.”
For one of Gilchrist-Brock’s students, a girl with cerebral palsy, the garden has even deeper meaning.
“She is one child who usually can’t play in the dirt and grass,” said Gilchrist-Brock. “I can’t even get her to come out of the garden sometimes.”
McKinley’s students already have harvested radishes this year, said Bonnie Freeman, program coordinator of Gardening Angeles. Squash, lettuce, corn, sugar snap peas and peppers should be ready in a few weeks, and the students will be able to eat what they pick, Freeman said.
The Gardening Angels project relies on a network of volunteers, most of them dispersed in Los Angeles’ inner-city schools.
“Sometimes there is no place to put a garden--everything is covered over by asphalt,” said Freeman. “But teachers want to have places where the kids can go and actually put their hands on things.”
Anyone interested in volunteering with Gardening Angels should call: (213) 744-4349.
