School Garden of the Year: What We Learned

By now, you may have heard about the “School Garden of the Year Award”, sponsored by Edible Jersey Magazine and the New Jersey Farm to School Network. From now on, this annual prize will be awarded during the Jersey Fresh Farm to School Week celebration at the end of September and will allow schools around New Jersey to highlight the work they do in school and community gardens.

What we learned this first year is that New Jersey’s schools are extremely innovative in using school gardens to teach all facets of curricula and teachers, administrators and volunteers alike support, promote and are passionate about school garden education. New Jersey has gardens in school courtyards, on roof tops, in community gardens off-site and in containers in school parking lots.

This is a movement, there’s no doubt about it. It is blossoming in schools across the country. But it needs systemic support in order to be sustained. In the next year, we’ll be advocating for this support through a number of different avenues and we’ll be asking you for your input to communicate these needs to the institutions that have the ability to envision a statewide system of school gardens.

Stay tuned. More to come.

If you missed the article which appeared in Edible Jersey Magazine’s Spring 2012 issue about New Jersey’s school garden scene, read it here. To see highlights from the “School Garden of the Year Award” presentation, click here.

Honorary Mention Awards for the School Garden of the Year Award will be presented to the Lawrenceville Elementary School on October 18th and St Philips Academy on October 24th. For more information about these events, email [email protected].

 

Would you like to receive the New Jersey School Garden Report four times a year? CLICK HERE to subscribe.

CLICK HERE to return to the newsletter