EDUCATION / Gardens flourish at elementary schools
Alesson in teamwork is being played out in the garden of Alice Fong Yu Elementary School, but the second-graders who are participating wouldn't know it.
They're just having fun as they work together to set up an intricate system of pipes to help water travel from a faucet to a plot of land where winter lettuce is beginning to emerge.
"You have to work together a lot," said Melanie Look, 7, who just finished watering with her classmates. "You get to get along with other kids that you don't normally get along with."
Urban schoolyard gardens are intended to be outdoor classrooms that teach children much more than how to plant seeds and pick a tomato. The cycle of life is played out daily for children who are also learning about environmentalism, recycling, solar energy and "compost tea" in a setting that is infinitely interesting for a child.
"Many of the kids don't have backyards, and many of them think that food comes from a supermarket," said Nan McGuire, chairwoman of the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance steering committee. "They learn so much in this environment."
Alice Fong Yu Elementary is considered one of the shining success stories in an effort to create gardens at all of San Francisco's 77 public elementary schools.
The 4,100-square-foot garden was created using just $7,000 in grants and a considerable amount of time and labor donated by the school's parent group. What emerged is an immaculately maintained garden teeming with cabbage, bok choy and lettuce in the winter and beans, carrots and squash during the late spring and early summer.
Schoolyard gardens also have an ally in the Alliance, a consortium of more than a dozen community groups and environmental organizations that help identify resources and grants and provide practical support for many of the district's 33 gardens. The group, which is celebrating its second anniversary next month, is considered the first resource when a school is trying to create or revitalize an existing garden.
Remarkably, most of the gardens have emerged with only minimal financial support from the school district.
Creating a schoolyard garden takes $500 to $200,000 -- to rip up asphalt, till the ground, fence off an area and buy the supplies necessary for sustaining the site -- depending on size and complexity of the project. Most of the funding comes from school parent groups or community foundations; sometimes some of the money is designated to help pay the salary of a teacher who will monitor the project. At some schools, a teacher volunteers to oversee the garden.
Once the hoes and shovels are purchased and the gardens planted, they are relatively cheap to maintain.
Depending on the size of the garden and the weather, children typically spend one or more class sessions in the garden every week, sometimes delving into the dirt for hands-on gardening and sometimes just using the garden as a tranquil backdrop for poetry readings or vocabulary lessons.
Arden Bucklin-Sporer, the garden coordinator and a part-time teacher at Alice Fong Yu, created a makeshift classroom in one corner of the garden with $30 worth of hay bales that are used as seats. Children have also helped create a pond with a solar-powered fountain that will soon be the home of a colony of frogs as well as mosquito fish, dragonfly larvae and water beetles.
And most importantly, throughout the season, the children plant, nurture, pick and eat an assortment of fruits and vegetables -- devouring some things that they would normally shun at home.
"If they grow them, it's a whole different thing than eating vegetables at home," Bucklin-Sporer said. "You cannot grow enough carrots for these kids and lettuce is a fun thing to grow because you can make big salads."
Alliance members believe it's never too early to get children using their green thumbs. Several gardens have been created at child care centers throughout the city.
The small garden at Junipero Serra Child Development Center at Holly Park in Bernal Heights has been such a success that a community group called the Living Library is working to raise at least $300,000 to expand the garden and create a nature walk in the park.