Buzz From the Garden – April/May 2016

Buzz From the Garden

April/May 2016

Hold on to your hats, folks, there has been a whirlwind of activity and learning going on in our Outdoor Learning Gardens.To start, our Garden Educator, Jimena shared her potato expertise from her Peruvian homeland by having the students plant some of her favorite varieties in the Discovery Garden. Just chop them up and cover them with soil- so easy!

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Djamila explored flower power exploring flower parts, learning about pollinators, and all kinds of flower tasting…

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Inspired by Andy Goldsworthy, whose temporary art installations are all made with natural materials, Djamila had us build spirals all over our campus made from found brought in from volunteers own gardens, parks, and sidewalks. In the spirit of creativity, cooperation and communication we celebrated Earth Day. Look what our students come up with when they work together:

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Kids learned to use “crab claws” to twist and pick. Not everybody likes mustard greens which was ok with Jimena as long as they were brave and tried them out!IMG_0327

Your kids have been participating in an all school Garden to Cafeteria program which is supervised by EarthArtAgriculture. Djamila has been taking students out each month to taste, harvest and wash vegetables, then brought to our cafeteria staff to put out in our salad bar. When our kids recognize something they grew and picked from the garden they are so excited! This month our snap peas really looked delicious next to Thursday pizza:

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We took some time for community care on our Garden Work Day. Somehow, the kids make all this work so much fun.

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Some science fair bound kiddos helped our garden program by figuring out a good technique for growing showy milkweed. The Monarch butterflies thank you, boys, we now have a lot of new milkweed starts to plant this fall.

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Remember our new trellis? The grape vines have busily taken over:

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And sometimes there is a quiet minute amongst all the activity to just check something out.

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We are wrapping up the year with garden celebrations. The K-2 last day of garden was super fun with scavenger hunts, rosemary harvest for foccacia dough that was handed out for home baking at the end of school by volunteer parents. The kids made herb bundles which made the whole school smell like sage, rosemary, mint and thyme.

The OLG would like to give a shout out to PEMCO Insurance for honoring our volunteer work and recognizing the value of our garden program with the Pemco 2016 Volunteer Award! Thank you, PEMCO!

This has been an amazing year of learning and excitement in our gardens. Thank you to our Garden Educators, PTA fundraisers, teachers, principal, staff, parents, volunteers, enthusiasts, and especially our students that make this program so successful!