Posts Tagged ‘school garden’

Chicago Rooftop Haven for Urban Agriculture

Friday, June 18th, 2010

photo: Scott Shigley

The Gary Comer Youth Center Roof Garden is an after-school learning space for youth and seniors in a neighborhood with little access to safe outdoor environments. Last year alone, it produced over 1,000 pounds of organic food used by students, local restaurants and the center’s café. Sleek and graphic, it turns the typical working vegetable garden into a place of beauty and respite.

Located in Chicago’s Grand Crossing neighborhood, the Gary Comer Youth Center offers a safe, welcoming
after-school space for indoor activity. Its 8,160 square foot green roof is a model for using traditionally underutilized space for urban agriculture and exceptional in its balance of an aesthetic vision with practical needs. The garden provides the crowning touch to an award-winning building recognized for its bold architecture.

The landscape architect worked closely with the architect and donor to develop a vision for a green roof to include a flower and working vegetable garden, and suggested that the center employ a full-time garden manager to enhance educational program development and manage maintenance. The result is a garden used in extremely creative ways for horticultural learning, environmental awareness and food production.
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Carpinteria School Creates Healthy Food Program

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

photo by David Petrie

Carpinteria High School in Santa Barbara County, California has developed a healthy food program that started with an organic garden. The students quickly embraced the garden and the program has continued to grow. The school’s horticulture class tends the garden every couple of days, the veterinary science students contribute their stable sweepings to the compost pile, the culinary class uses the food grown in the garden as does the cafeteria where lunch is prepared daily using the fresh organic produce.

The garden was started with the support of Carpinteria Unified School District Superintendent Paul Cordeiro who believes that health and education are related, and that garden and culinary classes play an important role in the quality of student’s lives. Carpinteria’s healthy food program continues to grow with plans for a new culinary kitchen where adult classes will also be offered and an on-campus community garden made available to families.
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Posted in School Gardens, Schools, childhood obesity, school lunch | 1 Comment »

Welsh School Plans Eco-makeover

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Edwardsville primary intends to become one of the greenest schools in Wales by opening three outdoor classrooms. Grant funding has paid for the outdoor classrooms, environment and development projects and the garden’s permaculture design as well as a gardener. The children will not only learn to grow, harvest and prepare their own food, but the garden will be used as a basis for learning other subjects such as math, science and history. School administrators feel that outdoor learning not only addresses poor eating habits and obesity issues, but also helps raise children’s self esteem and confidence. There are even plans to invite the surrounding community to grow food on a portion of the school’s land in the future.
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Communities Embrace School Gardens

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Inspired by Michelle Obama’s White House garden and Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard, communities across the country are embracing the value of school gardens. The Seedlings Project in Springs, NY was started by two parents who happened to be chefs. With the help of organizations like Project MOST, they were able to secure enough funding to expand the project by adding a greenhouse and employing a full-time gardener who also assists teachers in utilizing the garden in their lesson plans.
Parents and teachers are particularly interested in the nutritional education that their children are receiving. With obesity hitting epidemic proportions in the U.S., connecting kids with the food that they eat is well worth the effort. But their education extends beyond nutrition. One instructor at the Bridgehampton School has her high school design students use 3D animation software to design their landscape projects, then they head to the garden to build them.
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The Docks: Zero Energy School with Gardens

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Paris based architects Mikou Design Studio recently won a competition with their design for a zero-energy school and sports complex in Saint Ouen, France. Slated to begin construction in 2012, the building’s south-facing orientation will make the greatest use of passive solar energy and promises to make a strong ecological statement. Multiple gardens are incorporated into the terraced design, including primary and nursery school gardens.
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