As promised in the last blog, here is some info on school gardens in Pierce County. My great coworker Michelle Strand has written this blog for me. As a side note, the Proctor Farmers Market opened last Saturday! Yeah!
Many schools in Pierce County are now offering gardening programs that help kids learn about growing fruits, vegetables and flowers. Brett Clubbe, a representative for the WSU Pierce County Extension’s Square Foot Nutrition Project, reported that their school gardening program is now being used in schools all over the Clover Park District including; Custer, Dower, Park Lodge, Tillicum and Tyee Park and schools in the Tacoma School District including, Arlington, Bryant, De Long, Edison, Fawcett, Jefferson, Lister, Manitou Park, Roosevelt, Sheridan, Stafford, Stanley, Stewart Middle and Whitman. That’s a lot of schools!
Stanley Elementary School in Tacoma has an outdoor classroom (greenhouse, raised garden beds and native garden) that provides gardening experiences for their kids. Baker Middle School has their “Planting Seeds Garden Project” which will donate their harvest to a local food bank and the flowers they grow will be dried and used to create flower arrangements, which they plan to sell at the yearly event “Bite of Baker” in September.
Using a hands-on approach the school gardens are being used to teach students in the classroom how to grow and nurture food plants to be harvested and used in easy recipes. The garden sizes vary from eight boxes for every grade in the school to use, to one box serving a few classes. For more information about implementing this program at your school contact Brett at 253-798-2596.
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