Working Together to Create Chicago School Gardens
by Rory Click

ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED: 2001 Winter

School gardens are not a new concept. Schools across the country and around the world have developed learning gardens for their students for years. The school garden movement in Great Britain is tremendous, and California is building gardens throughout their state system. Here in the Chicago region, schools are developing gardens independently with ad hoc funding or through a few community gardening assistance programs for city sites.

As a gardener, parent and educator, I have always thought that school gardens for children are one of those classic "no-brainers". How better to teach our kids about the world around them and how it works than through the microcosm of the garden? Reconnect to nature, learn about taking care of a living thing, and on and on--the lessons are all right there in the garden. So build it and they will come, right? Well, not exactly.

The Chicago School Garden Initiative
How do you determine where to locate a garden on the school grounds? How do you select plants for your particular site conditions and those that tolerate near-perpetual kid traffic? How do you get other teachers to utilize the garden as an educational resource? These are a few of the many questions and issues we have tried to address through the Chicago School Garden Initiative (SGI). SGI began in 1997 as a collaboration between the Chicago Botanic Garden, Chicago Park District, Chicago Public Schools, City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development, Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance and Openlands Project. It came about in cooperation with the "campus parks" program started by Mayor Richard M. Daley, to determine a "best-practice" model for school garden development. Specifically, SGI provides schools with a three-year program during which they design and build a unique garden for their school, and integrate the garden with curricula and classroom activities.

A key component of SGI is facilitating the involvement of teachers and students in garden design through meetings with a "garden leadership" team. This team, typically composed of 4-6 teachers, discusses the overall garden concept and where the garden should be sited on campus. A base map is developed and shown to students by the teachers. Classes discuss what they want to grow in their garden. Students, teachers and parents help install the garden, including hauling compost and mulch, planting, watering and weeding. Throughout this process, there are professional horticulturists and landscape designers to help guide the school and coordinate materials acquisition, but the garden is clearly the school's project.

The other key effort of SGI is teacher training and curricula development. Training sessions emphasize both formal materials (GrowLab and LifeLab), and informal classroom activities shared by the teachers themselves. Several training sessions are held each year for members of the garden teams, but any interested teachers from the school may attend.

A teacher representative from each SGI school sits on an advisory board which meets four times each year to share information and compile a "GreenTeacher" newsletter. SGI also works to involve the local community through our parent-child manuals and summer family workdays. It's important that there are plenty of opportunities for parents and neighbors to be part of the school garden.

Through the past four years we have learned a lot about the process of developing school gardens, gradually evolving a "best-practice" model that we are eager to share with other schools. As the SGI program concludes its pilot phase, we are looking ahead to defining a program for a wider group of schools, both in the city and across the suburbs.

The Importance of School Gardens
Those of us who garden tend to think that gardening knowledge is common sense. But then, why did over a third of the teachers I recently surveyed not know what makes up healthy soil!

In fact, most kids--city and suburban--have never before planted anything. They have not watched a seed germinate, nurtured the little plant on a windowsill, or transplanted the seedling to the garden. They have not watered or weeded or harvested. Through the years I've been doing this work, I cannot tell you how many times the children have discovered worms as they were planting and run screaming to the trash bins to throw them away. This, my fellow gardeners, is what we call, "a teachable moment". Planting halts while we have a brief lesson on the incredible value of worms.

When my son was younger, he collected grasshoppers in a big jar that was kept in the freezer. He still delights in observing the creatures in our home garden and frequently shows his father and me another extraordinary insect discovery. He has a true respect for these amazing creatures. It troubles me that most children are not learning these simple and profound lessons from the garden. No one would argue that we need a computer lab and a library in every school, why not a garden life-laboratory as well? To me, understanding our natural world is as fundamental as basic literacy.

School gardens are not just places for plant science and ecology; they are places of art, music, math, and creative writing. In the garden we can teach about sharing and teamwork and the interconnected web of life. We help our children understand how their time and effort can create beauty. Students that participate in school gardens know their efforts will be there for years to come, and their gardens will be appreciated by thousands of people, perhaps even their own children and grandchildren. But then, you know this part already. That's why you garden, and why you're reading this newsletter.

If you want to know more about developing school gardens or participating in our program, e-mail or call me. We have a great school garden symposium every year and a long list of resources to send you. We are working on a new educational component for our website, chicagobotanic.org, and I ultimately hope we can have a link withweedpatch.com. We may not have a program to provide assistance to every school that wants help developing a garden, but the more schools we know about, the stronger our case to potential funders about the incredible need for support. And, if you have a school garden, we'd love to hear about it.

Rory Klick is Manager of Community Gardening at the Chicago Botanic Garden. You may e-mail her at rklick@chicagobotanic.org or call (847) 835-6887.

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