Growing Gardens and Growing Youth: The Benefits of Garden Based Learning

The following article was written by Jordan Garcia of the Stanford Community Writing Project

There is a special place in East Palo Alto: a sanctuary of sorts. Refreshing air blows across the baylands on the edge of a working class neighborhood. At the edge of this community, a small paradise rises. On a piece of land nearly an acre in size, plots of vegetables, flowers, and young fruit trees encircle a large metal dome structure slowly turning into a shady green retreat beneath twisting Wisteria vines. Onions, lettuce, and peppers alongside California Poppies and daffodils are but a few of the plants that offer tasty treats to both the tongue and eyes. Bees buzz from plant to plant, butterflies flutter against the breeze to visit the next flower, and the waterfowl in the distant expanse of the baylands call to each other. The sound of children’s laughter and the excited voices of a group of 1st Grade students can be overheard while School Garden Teacher Bryden Johnston begins another garden-based learning session.

Bryden Johnston has been working at East Palo Alto Charter School (EPACS) with kindergarten-5th grade students for nearly a year. Bryden and the staff and volunteers of Collective Roots have successfully created a garden just outside the front door of the school. On a weekly basis, Bryden Johnston takes classes from each grade to the garden to explore various aspects of the life sciences. “Our lessons address the California Standards,” she says, “We teach the kindergarteners topics like the five senses and weather; and we teach 5th graders topics like human digestion and photosynthesis.” In these garden-learning sessions, students spend half of the time in the classroom, and the other half outside in the garden. Just footsteps away from the school, the basic theory learned in class is easily reinforced by the experience of participating in a thriving school garden. For example, a lecture on bugs and insects is complimented by insect collecting in the garden, and a lecture on plant anatomy is reinforced with garden activities like weeding and plant maintenance. The community-based garden, earthworm powered compost area, and access to the adjacent baylands habitat provide amazing real life opportunities for these students to be exposed to biology, environmental science, and practices in sustainability and conservation.

Garden-based learning is a long-established mode of education especially geared for the developing minds of young children. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a proponent of integrating garden-based learning into a child’s education, who once said that a child’s “knowledge of the natural world serves as a foundation for his later learning” (Sealy, 2001). The first school garden was established in 1891 at the George Putnam School in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The original purpose in the United States was purely for aesthetic reasons, but the potential for educational learning waited behind the garden gates to be released by orginizations like Collective Roots (Russell 2002).

The Garden Learning Program at Collective Roots and EPACS is similar to other notable programs in the Bay Area like the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California. The garden at EPACS encourages its students to develop their understanding of biological principles, problem solving skills, and creativity. An October 2007 independent report prepared by La France Associates showed that students from second, fourth and fifth grades showed significant increases in both scientific knowledge and general learning skills. Additionally students at Collective Roots are given the opportunity to explore many aspects of the natural world and construct personal qualities like inquisitiveness and a certain level of self-confidence that are crucial for educational success. Collective Roots’ programs for Garden-based learning and youth development are considered to be contributing factors in helping to raise EPACS’s Academic Performance Index (API). For example, in 2006, the API at EPACS increased 46 points, well above the state-desired target of just 1 point per year. As of now, EPACS performance in both elementary education and middle school education are above the California averages for both school levels.

Additionally, the students at EPACS grow to understand the vital connections between nature, food, and people. By working through the trials and tribulations of raising their own vegetables for a salad, and ultimately serving salads to the entire school, these students are gaining a very valuable lesson that is lost in this age of McDonald’s Happy Meals. They understand that the food they eat does not come from a grocery store or the fast food restaurant down the street, but rather, these students understand that their food comes from the hard work of people utilizing the resources that are innate to the soil we walk on, something that many people in the United States sadly take for granted. Collective Roots and EPACS are working to combat this common misconception among younger generations and reinstate an appreciation for hard work, getting their hands dirty, and the immense benefits of something as small as a tomato seed.

The garden at EPACS provides a refuge for students in East Palo Alto as well. After school programs including the Garden Club allow the students to remain in a safe, fun, and educational environment when school is not in session. Lisa Chamberlain, MD, MPH and Director of the Pediatric Advocacy Program at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford states: “From the pediatrician's perspective, working in this positive environment has an immeasurable impact on the mental health and wellbeing of these children-a health and social benefit that these children will carry with them for years to come.”

While the children are planting new seeds and learning from the biodiversity of the garden, parents also do their part to learn and grow from this valuable resource. Parents regularly donate time to help build and expand the garden on community workdays, helping parents get involved with their child’s education by improve their child’s learning environment. In many respects, the life of the garden is truly interdependent on the involvement of the surrounding community in East Palo Alto. “Everybody becomes interested and everybody becomes involved with the experiential aspect of garden-based learning,” Johnston says, “Everyone can participate.”

References cited in this article include the following:

Sealy, M. R. (2001). A garden for children at Family Road Care Center. Unpublished master’s
thesis. Graduate faculty of Louisiana State University and Agricultural Mechanical
College: School of Landscape Architecture.

Russell, Stephen T. (2002). Monograph. University of California. “Garden-Based Learning
in Basic education: A Historical Review.”

East Palo Alto Charter School website: http://www.epacs.org/school_achievements.php

Garden Based Learning Results: http://www.collectiveroots.org/node/388

For more information on garden based learning at Collective Roots, please visit:

http://www.collectiveroots.org/garden_based_learning

Article written by Jordan Garcia of the Stanford Community Writing Project