by Stacey Tuel | Special to The Sun
Across the Valley, our children are digging deep into understanding how to nourish themselves. With thriving school gardens in each elementary, middle, and high school, our students learn with their hands (and tastebuds) where their food comes from. Much like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse started “The Edible Schoolyard” in Berkeley schools, our own local food aficionado, Kathleen Thompson Hill, founded our Sonoma School Garden Project. Seven years ago, with the aid of the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation and a generous donation from Stone Edge Farm, our own edible schoolyards were born.
These edible schoolyards, now filled with fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers, offer our children the chance to get hands-on with their own nutrition. But our gardens aren’t just for growing good, healthy food; they also serve as inspiring classrooms for science, botany, art, writing, math, and many more subjects. Since the program’s inception, our Valley schools have offered students all kinds of gardening classes and enrichment programs, like cooking, horticulture, composting, pollination, viticulture, native landscaping, building, and more.
Our school gardens rely on community support. Without donations, our gardens simply wouldn’t grow. In the past seven years, dedicated teams of volunteers, parents, and teachers have built these gardens from a labor of love, good will, and generosity. Here are some of the great projects growing in our gardens this spring:
Adele Harrison Middle School
As part of the 4H Vested in Vineyards program, Adele Harrison Middle School planted a small Zinfandel vineyard in 2011. With the support of Larsen Family Winery, horticulture students learn all about viticulture. Last year’s harvest, nearly 400 lbs of grapes, was made into sorbet. This year, Larsen Family Winery will be making wine for the school as a way to raise funds for the garden. Last week, along with owner Becky Larsen and vineyard manager Isidro Corona, students learned how to prune and tie vines. After working alongside the vineyard crew from Sonoma Creek Land and Farming, students enjoyed garden-grown kale chips and fresh made lemonade.
Woodland Star Charter School
At the annual “Love Our Garden Workday” students spend time enjoying and loving their garden, while preparing the garden for spring planting. After enjoying climbing on two mountains of rich compos, students worked busily to fill wheelbarrows, amend gardens, and ready their gardens for planting.
Also part of the annual tradition, students made special valentines for the garden, sweet love notes with messages like “I love you garden. Your flowers are beautiful. Thank you for your tasty tomatoes.”
Cooking from the Garden
As part of the school garden project, local chefs have volunteered their time to help teach cooking classes and develop recipes for each school garden. Local chef John McReynolds of Stone Edge Farm has been instrumental in starting our school gardens, and now chefs Joanne Filipello and son Beau Filipello will be coordinating the chef partnerships with schools. Thanks to their help, our students will be cooking five-star garden dishes with some of the best chefs from our favorite local restaurants.
None of these great projects would be possible without the generous support of our community partners. We want to keep these gardens growing and thriving – and help keep these important classrooms open to all our students. If you’d like to get involved in the school garden program, contact kathleensonoma@gmail.com.
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