In addition to beautifying neighborhoods and producing fresh plants and vegetables, school gardens teach vital lessons in a variety of different subjects.
Close to 50 San Diego schools currently house gardens, according to the Master Gardener Association of San Diego County’s Web site.
Sue Herz is one of two first grade teachers in charge of the garden at Ocean Beach Elementary, 4741 Santa Monica Ave.
The plot comprises 10 planter boxes, each 4 feet by 8 feet, and is visible to passers-by on Cable Street. Herz noted that first-graders are currently pruning the garden’s collection of apple trees, grape vines, various herbs, sunflowers and even a raspberry bush.
“I like the kids to experience the cleaning up of last year,” she said.
A school staple for more than 20 years, the garden is well supported by staff and students, according to Herz, who recounted a time when the garden almost didn’t make the cut.
“They wanted to take it out for parking and there was a community support to keep it.”
Due to the fact that gardening requires the execution of a variety of widely applicable skills, Herz said she can incorporate the space into several different areas of her lesson plans, including plant growth, one of the science content standards for the State of California.
Additionally, Herz said gardening applies to other, less obvious areas of curriculum like literature and drawing.
“We did a book last year that the kids wrote about the garden and the things that we grew,” she explained.
In an effort to maintain a completely organic garden, Herz said that pesticides are not utilized. Also, Herz said she has plans in the near future to explore other natural gardening techniques, such as vermicomposting, which uses worms to aerate soil and convert organic matter into compost, which in turn fertilizes growing plants.
As a future fund-raiser, Herz cited plans for a recycling drive in which students will collect aluminum cans and plastics. All proceeds will benefit the garden program.
Sunset View Elementary School also utilizes a school garden as part of its curriculum. For the past two years, Parent Teacher Association member Wendy van den Helder has helped oversee the 1,200-square-foot Sunset View garden, which she said was established in the 1980s.
Uniquely, Sunset View’s school garden includes a California native plant section. Van den Helder said it houses a coastal sage scrub community, black sage, buckwheat and deerweed.
“These are plants that grow specifically on the coast and some of the plants we’ve collected are from San Diego,” she said.
The garden, which is divided into three sections, houses the native plants, a collection of teacher’s plots that serve different classrooms and a plot where the school’s Cesar Chavez club raises its crops, according to van den Helder. Currently, students are growing a wide variety of crops, including artichokes, strawberries, bell peppers, corn, bush beans and marigolds.
She also noted that several teachers have opted to use the garden as part of their curriculum and expects this year’s program to reach a good number of students.
Van den Helder said the garden offers students a look into where their fruits and vegetables actually originated.
“A lot of children have never seen where tomatoes come from [or] what an artichoke looks like growing on a plant,” she said. “They see things in the grocery store and they don’t see the actual plant that they grow on.”
Recently, a timed irrigation system was installed, which van den Helder said helped exponentially with maintenance, which is shared by volunteers and students.
“Children come out at lunchtime,” van den Helder said. “We’ll be out during recess and a lot of them will come up and help maintain it.”
In an effort to provide public information for properly incorporating gardens into school curriculums, the School Garden Committee of the Master Gardener Association recently launched the “Plant a Seed, Watch it Grow” Web site, offering a guide to garden design, construction, plant material, pest management, composting and maintenance.
The site also contains more than 100 links for additional information on funding sources, newsletters, catalogs and educational organizations.
Education perks notwithstanding, the tangible benefits of gardens in primary schools are hard to overlook.
“What’s wonderful is that they get in there and their eyes light up when they see bugs and they love to get their hands in the garden,” van den Helder said. “It gives them a connection with nature that they don’t always get.”
More on the association can be found at www.mastergardenerssandiego.org