My kids’ school has been pretty interesting this year. It’s an International Baccalaureate candidate school, so they’re trying a lot of new things right now. Each class has taken on a community project. For my son’s class, that’s starting a garden at the school.

School gardens have become more popular in recent years. School have come to see the value of gardening as a way to teach science to children and to show them what fresh produce looks like. Students get to see how seeds grow into plants and how plants produce fruits, vegetables and flowers. They can learn about bees and insects which are valuable to the life cycle of the plants, and the ones which are damaging to it.

Our school is just starting it’s gardens. This weekend they had volunteers come on campus to prepare garden beds, and they’re having a seed drive to collect seeds. We sent quite a number from my husband’s stash of seed, as in our current situation we just don’t have the space to plant many of them.

Later this week, the school will have groups of students planting seeds. The plan is to grow both vegetables and flowers for the kids. It’s not going to be easy, as not all the spaces chosen for gardening have sprinklers installed already, and those areas will have to be watered manually.

If your children’s school is gardening already, I hope it’s a wonderful experience for them. If not, maybe it’s a good time to bring up the subject and see what it would take to put aside a little space for a school garden. It doesn’t have to be huge, just enough space to be educational. Civil Eats has a good article on a few school garden programs across the country.