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“There’s been an increase in the
number of organizations promoting school gardening,” said Domenghini. She said her group doesn’t keep a count of gardens in schools, but that about 1,300 youth programs in schools, churches, libraries and other places have registered with it.
“Fruit and vegetable gardens are probably most popular, but some grow flowers,” she said. “We see all different types of garden programs.”
Todd LoFrese, assistant superintendent for support services for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools in North Carolina, said there’s a gardening component at nearly all of their 18 schools, ranging from a small herb garden to support a culinary program to a high school with a student-run program that donates produce to needy families. A new elementary school set to open next year has been designed to include garden plots, he said, and will have a rainwater collection system and a green roof with vegetation.
“It’s a good way to get families involved and also the community involved,” LoFrese said.
The gardens in his district are funded in a variety of ways, including donations, grants and fundraising from parent groups.
In addition to the garden at Moss Haven, the Richardson school district in suburban Dallas has two other gardens at schools and plans for three more, said Phil Lozano, the district’s associate director of facilities services. One of the other gardens in the Richardson district was funded by the district, and the other by a parent-teacher association. Moss Haven, which gets support, including curriculum materials, from the Heart Association, was made possible by donations, grants and funds from its PTA.
Lozano said the goal is for the gardens to reach 100 percent sustainability, which includes composting, and collecting water from sources including rainwater or air-conditioning condensation.
In the Houston area, the nonprofit Urban Harvest has helped start more than 100 school gardens, training and advising those who want to start them and in some cases providing a garden educator to give lessons. The organization aims to promote nutrition and respect for the environment, said Carol Burton, its director of youth gardening education.
Heading into fifth grade this year at Moss Haven, 10-year-old Natalie Duval is anxious to see what the garden looks like after the summer. Last year, she was pleasantly surprised when her fourth-grade class taste-tested dips made from garden ingredients including spinach, parsley and cucumbers.
“I didn’t think I was going to like it,” she said. “I was like, ‘Wow, that was pretty good.'”
“Everybody’s trying to eat better, and if we ate those foods in the cafeteria we’d be healthy,” she said.
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