What is Garden Based Learning?

Definition of Garden Based Learning (Also Referred to as Plant Based Learning)

"Garden Based Learning (GBL) can be defined simply as an instructional strategy that utilizes a garden as a teaching tool. The pedagogy is based on experiential education, which is applied in the living laboratory of the garden."

-Revisiting Garden Based Learning in Basic Education: Philosophical Roots, Historical Foundations, Best Practices and Products, Impacts, Outcomes, and Future Directions. (2002) Daniel Desmond, James Grieshop, and Aarti Subramaniam. View this excellent article prepared for the FAO by clicking here.

The following is excerpted from an excellent paper titled "Uses of Active Plant-Based Learning (APBL) in K-12 Educational Settings," A White Paper Prepared for the Partnership for Plant-Based Learning by Scott P. Lewis, Ph.D.

Active Plant-Based Learning refers to activities, programming, and curricula that use plants as a foundation for integrating learning in and across disciplines through active, real-world experiences that also have personal meaning for children and youth.

Plant-based education in the United States goes back more than 100 years. The nature-study movement, which was an attempt to reform elementary education in this country from about 1890 to1930, promoted outdoor work and first-hand observations of common plants and animals as a way to improve teaching methods and students’ connections to the earth (Doris, 2002; Shair, 1999). In the late 1800s, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society provided educators with training for teaching gardening in schools (Subramaniam, 2002). The first school garden in this country was developed in 1891 in Roxbury, Massachusetts, at the George Putnam School by Henry Lincoln Clapp, who had studied school gardens in Europe. By 1918, “youth gardening” was well established, and there was at least one school garden in every state (M.R. Sealy as cited in Subramaniam, 2002). School gardening was considered a patriotic duty of students during the two world wars, but Sealy notes that gardening later waned in importance as schools focused on other areas, such as technology. A revival of school gardening in the U.S. occurred in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of reform efforts connected to the “War on Poverty.” During this time, a growing concern about the environment also motivated many educators to focus on developing school gardens. In recent years, a resurgence in school gardening has been attributed to national and regional conferences, beginning in 1989 with a symposium sponsored by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and continuing in 1993 with the Youth Gardening Symposia conducted by the American Horticultural Society (Heffernan, 1997). These conferences have focused on ways that children’s gardens could support educational goals as well as beautify school grounds.

Today, plant-based learning is found in a diverse array of programs in the schools, such as gardening and horticulture programs, formal biology and botany courses, environmental education, nutrition education, science fairs, and school ground restoration projects. Many exciting school-based programs have been started in recent years with the development of excellent new curricula such as GrowLab, Life Lab, Junior Master Gardener, Project Learning Tree, Fast Plants, and Project Wild. Plant-based learning also takes place outside the school setting when children visit parks and botanical gardens, participate in extramural club projects such as removing invasive plant species, and study nature at summer camps. Examples of programs linked to plant-based learning in K-12 education are listed in the appendix. Rather than evaluating or recommending particular program content, the focus here is on determining why studying and working with plants is desirable, why an active approach to learning with plants is preferable to a traditional approach, and what practices are noteworthy in the review and planning of plant-based education.

Explore the World of Garden Based Learning

Here are some excellent articles and resources that are available online that will help you further define and explore this exciting strategy for teaching:

Cornell University Garden Based Learning Portal

UC Davis Garden Based Learning Group

American Horticultural Society Partnership for Plant Based Education

Partnership for Plant Based Learning

National Gardening Association (Kids Gardening Portal)

Garden Based Learning in Basic Education: A Historical Overview

FEED (Food-Based Ecological Education Design)

California School Garden Network
CSGN encourages and supports the goal of having a garden in every school, and seeks to create opportunities for children to discover fresh food, make healthier food choices, and become better nourished.

Green Schoolyard Alliance
The Green Schoolyard Alliance is a incredible San Francisco model for transforming our educational environments. Nan Mcguire, Arden Bucklin-Sporer, and many other dedicated and visionary activists support this effort. CLICK HERE to check out their incredible website.

Living Library
Whooaa! If you aren’t already familiar with Bonnie Sherk's work, including her Living Library, then you are in for a big treat.

Garden for the Environment
The Garden for the Environment is an amazing garden and outdoor living classroom. Blair Randall and Suzie Pallidino are the inspired leaders of this organization.

The Edible Schoolyard
The Edible Schoolyard, in collaboration with Martin Luther King Junior Middle School, provides urban public school students with a one-acre organic garden and a kitchen classroom. Using food systems as a unifying concept, students learn how to grow, harvest, and prepare nutritious seasonal produce.

Green Schoolyard Resource Directory
San Francisco Beautiful co-edited the Green Schoolyard Resource Directory and is making it available to the public. (SFB is a co-sponsor of the Green Schoolyard Alliance.) The directory has information to help communities green their school grounds while providing hands-on learning opportunities for children.

Master Gardener
The San Mateo County Master Gardener’s are available for school garden consultations, call the hotline for more information.

A Garden in Every School—California Department of Education
A Garden in Every School Initiative’s goal is to have a garden in the almost 9,000 public schools in California. Over the past ten years approximately 30 percent of California schools have established gardens. Currently, the program funds three regional garden-based learning centers to provide assistance to schools.

Life Lab Science Program
Life Lab Science Program provides training for teachers in our model school garden, the Life Lab Garden Classroom and at school sites across the state. Workshops cover a range of garden-based learning topics including workshops based on our Growing Classroom Activity Guide and Life Lab Science K-5 Garden-Based Science Curriculum. The Life Lab curriculum is science based and has been adapted to language arts. Life Lab also hosts a summer institute program and a regional garden-based science conference in the spring.

Master Gardeners
University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners have offices in most counties in California. Master Gardeners provide various types of gardening support for gardeners in their area as well as extensive training to become a Master Gardener.

California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom
The Agriculture in the Classroom program hosts an annual fall conference for teachers. Many of the workshops highlight garden-based learning and they have had over 250 middle school teachers involved in their programs. Every year the program publishes a Teacher's Resource Guide available in hard copy and on CD that, along with unit lesson plans and fact sheets on California food products, is provided free.

Junior Master Gardener Program
The Junior Master Gardener Program grows good kids by igniting a passion for learning, success, and service through a unique gardening education. The Junior Master Gardener Program has curriculum for elementary and middle school youth, with hundreds of independent and group learning experiences that can be used in a garden or classroom setting.

California Women for Agriculture
California Women for Agriculture support California Agriculture. The group hosts an annual meeting and also individual members are volunteers in a related agriculture projects. Regional chapters have members who volunteer with school gardens.

California Association of Nursery and Garden Centers
CANGC has many resources available for teachers, members and students in the horticulture industry.

Common Vision
Common Vision runs a veggie oil-powered caravan, and 25-earth educators from Common Vision bring programs to schools that include a performance for the whole school and all-day workshops that include planting up to 25 fruit trees, teaching West African agricultural drumming, and writing garden-inspired earth-conscious
hip-hop.

Urban Sprouts
Urban Sprouts is a nonprofit organization that supports school gardens in urban middle and high schools in San Francisco. Urban Sprouts teaches youth to grow, harvest, prepare and eat vegetables from the school garden, in order to help youth actively engage in school, eat better and exercise more, and connect with the environment and each other. Led by Abby Jaramillo, Executive Director, one of the great leaders in the school garden movement in San Francisco.

Getting Going Growing
Getting Going Growing is a non-profit community collaborative dedicated to supporting School Gardens. Getting Going Growing acts as a resource clearinghouse for help with getting school gardens growing. Get Growing Going connects schools with providers of in kind donations such as garden supplies or irrigation help. Susan Stansbury and Susan Osofsky are outstanding leaders in this organization that is advancing the field of garden based learning.

The Center for Placed Based Education at the Antioch New England Institute
The Center for Place-based Education (formerly the Center for Environmental Education) promotes community-based education programs. Its projects and programs encourage partnerships between students, teachers, and community members that strengthen and support student achievement, community vitality and a healthy environment.

The Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens
Based on one of the oldest organic farms in California, the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens is an internationally respected model for small-scale urban food production, agricultural preservation, and farm-based education.

City Farmer
Urban Agriculture Notes Published by City Farmer, Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture

Green Teen Community Gardening Program
The Green Teen Community Gardening Program works year-round with youth ages 7 -17 in Beacon and Poughkeepsie, New York. They learn about food, farming, entrepreneurship, and health through hands-on experiences. Participants grow plants and vegetables in their classrooms, on farms, and in community gardens. During the school year, Green Teen holds local programs both during and after school.

L.A. Unified School District Policy on School Gardens

Click here and look on page 54. Also, check out:

1) 2004 Child Nutrition Act included Farm to Cafeteria legislation under Section 122 entitled, "Access to Local Foods and School Gardens."

2) Oregon HB 3601 - to fund a farm-to-school and school garden pilot program within the Oregon Department of Education Child Nutrition

3) various California policies, including California Assembly Bill 1535, California Instructional School Garden Program (2006)