School Gardening Plows Forward in Hillsborough County [04/07/2008]

by Judi Jetson

Forty local elementary and middle school teachers met Saturday morning, March 29 at the Learning Gate Community School in Lutz, Florida for hands-on learning in an organic vegetable garden. Ten teachers from Learning Gate led the workshop, in collaboration with a team of researchers from the University of South Florida, in order to make school gardening more accessible for local children.

Interest in school gardening has mushroomed across the nation, but Florida schools have lagged behind schools in states like California, which plans to create a garden in every school. Rising rates of obesity and Type II Diabetes in young children have educators and parents scrambling for innovative ways to inspire children to develop a taste for healthful, natural foods like garden vegetables. USF professor of Sociology Laurel Graham says, “Research has shown that children who help to grow vegetables are more likely to try eating what they grow, and tasting these vegetables increases their likelihood of preferring these foods over the less healthful food choices often pitched to children.” Gardening at school also helps to counter the spread of “Nature Deficit Disorder” in which children have little opportunity to observe plants and animals in their natural habitats and to develop a love of nature.

The Learning Gate Community School is the community partner in this USF research project, an environmentally themed charter school serving roughly 450 students in grades K-8. True to the school’s motto-- “Nature is Our Best Teacher”--Learning Gate has a large organic vegetable garden, a greenhouse, a composting center, and it is working to develop a “Seed-To-Soup” program in which garden produce becomes part of the lunch menu and cafeteria waste is recycled into compost. Its outdoor classroom provides numerous spontaneous opportunities for learning something new. As the school’s principal, Patricia Girard put it, “That’s so important for kids to learn, that flow and flexibility, seizing the moments of learning.” USF professors Laurel Graham, Jennifer Friedman, Rebecca Zarger, and Elaine Howes have been studying the school’s innovations in order to learn which aspects are most effective and which could have broad applicability for local schools.

This research project and the workshop are funded through a grant from the USF Collaborative for Children, Families, and Communities. This workshop is the first step toward launching a new organization entitled Tampa Bay School Gardening Network which will host a website supporting teachers and families seeking ways to teach and learn through gardening.

For further information, contact Dr. Laurel Graham, USF Department of Sociology, at lgraham@cas.usf.edu.