Heart Beet’s Part

Planning and Planting
As with all our gardens, our initial consultation and visit to the garden site is free. For school gardens it is important that we meet with the principal and any faculty that will be using the garden. The goal of the consultation is to choose a good location and determine what specific ideas the teachers have for using the garden in their curriculum. With this information we can design a productive and educational garden that fits the school’s needs. Once the design has been approved, it’s time for planting! The initial planting of a garden can be a great way to bring a class or whole school community together. Take a look at our installation process.

Keeping it Growing (Maintenance)
Once your school garden has been planted, we want to help you keep it going. One option is for us to come bi-monthly or monthly and take care of the garden during or after school hours. If we come bi-monthly we can show small groups of students what we do to care for the plants and why. We are also always happy to answer any questions a teacher might have about their garden and give advice and help by phone, email or in person. We could also train interested teachers in basic garden maintenance. Take a look at our maintenance options.

For a more integrated and curriculum-based approach, we could plant around a specific theme or concept. For example, a “pizza garden” could incorporate skills based on polls, percentages and fractions. Through speaking with teachers about their planned curriculum we can easily generate units that make use of the garden.

Funding
We understand that most schools are strapped for cash, so we can also help fundraise with your school to initially build the garden and support a regular maintenance program. There are a great many grants available to schools that want to have gardens on campus, and we would be thrilled to help with the process of getting one. Other, more home-grown fundraising ideas could be a vegetable themed costume party, a raffle or having a dismissal-time farm stand where parents could buy the food their children grew for an at-cost price.