Garden to Table is a nonprofit that partners with elementary schools and our community in Boulder Valley. Currently serving 18 schools in Boulder Valley School District, our program reaches more than 6,500 students. We provide everything a school needs to maintain its garden so the garden is ready for harvesting, sampling, and learning. Our Garden Team makes weekly check-ups to ensure each school garden is thriving. Our standards-based curriculum includes lesson plans for grades PreK through 5th, addressing academic concepts while engaging students in gardening tasks. Our Program Team provides instructional resources and consultation to support teachers in program implementation. To bring Garden to Table to your school, email charlotte@gardentotable.org.
Who’s involved
- Principals provide program leadership throughout the school community
- Teachers implement the standards-based garden lessons
- Parents and Community Volunteers assist the teachers during garden lessons and provide garden care
- Garden to Table Staff provide the guidance, support, and scheduling so garden lessons can be a success
Goals
- Enrich student education by using on-site gardens to teach academic subjects through hands-on lessons
- Address health & environmental issues by teaching the importance of food choice, gardening skills, and ecological knowledge
- Build community by engaging schools and local community through special events and volunteer opportunities
New Blog Entry – Lindsey’s 5 Favorite Plants for Teaching
School gardens provide children with an opportunity to connect with nature, grow and taste their own fresh veggies, spend time moving outdoors, and complete meaningful tasks with their peers and community. They are also wonderful resources for real-world hands-on academic learning! Garden to Table is a nonprofit SGSO (school garden support organization) that has been helping students in the Boulder Valley, Colorado area learn in their own gardens for 20 years! They currently partner with 19 elementary schools, serving over 6500 students, with every class PreK through 5th grade learning in the garden in the Fall and Spring growing seasons. Lindsey LeCuyer, Garden to Table’s executive director, shares her 5 favorite plants for teaching PreK-5th grade students:
Best for smiles while learning – Sunflowers
Little PreK and Kindergarten fingers can easily plant larger sunflower seeds, and the tall friendly flowers are a magical welcome back to school the following year! When “heads” are removed and dried, the seeds are perfect for 1st grade counting and math lessons. Sunflowers are easy to grow and sprouts are easy to thin after inevitable over-seeding by large groups of young students.
Best for witnessing the whole life cycle – Radishes
One of the challenges of school gardening is that so much of the growth happens in Summer when kids are out of school. This is especially true in a place like Colorado where the growing season is quite short! Some of the radishes planted in May can be left to go to seed, with viable seeds usually ready by mid August. This is perfect timing for 3rd graders to explore the mature plants, gather seeds, and plant them in newly-cleared space created by a carrot harvest. With a little cooperation from Mother Nature, small and sweet radishes will be ready to harvest and taste 9 weeks later!
Best for magic moments with kids – Root Vegetables
All of us who work at Garden to Table have been lucky enough to experience the awe and excitement of a kid pulling (ideally actually gently digging, but pulling sounds better) carrots or potatoes out of the ground. Root veggies are a great way to get 2nd grade hands directly in the soil they’re learning about, and to entice 4th graders to try something new for their nutrition lesson. Our favorites are funny shaped or hugging carrots, and potatoes that seem to have an endless underground supply!
Best “Garden to Table” moment – Lettuce
In most school districts, bringing a couple of cucumbers into a cafeteria that’s serving 500 students isn’t practical and doesn’t have much impact. In the Garden to Table curriculum framework, most of the harvest is tasted or goes home with the students right away. Our big exception is lettuce! With a variety of colors and shapes available, 1st graders learn about parents and offspring as they plant “baby” lettuces eight weeks ahead of the summer garden. Grown under caterpillar tunnels for protection and to promote growth, just two garden beds can yield enough lettuce to serve an entire school. Our 2nd graders harvest, wash and weigh the lettuce as they learn about the concepts of producers and consumers. After a careful washing by our great partners in the school cafeterias, the entire school enjoys a “Eat a Rainbow” salad day for school lunch!
Best for soil health – Cover Crop Mix!
Around 8 years ago, Garden to Table adopted Winter cover cropping into our soil care routine, and we’ve seen great results! One of the many benefits of our mix of hairy vetch, turnip, winter pea, radish, and winter rye is that the soil isn’t bare between seasons, and it gives students one more opportunity to work in the soil, sow seeds, and examine plants. 5th graders complete necessary soil care while learning about how their actions directly impact our local ecosystem and larger earth systems.