April 15, 2005

Schoolyard Gardens: A Place to Grow

By Alison Fromme
Special to the Neighborhood Newswire

Boys huddled around a magnifying glass and an encyclopedia, busily identifying bugs. Moments before they were unable to sit still in a classroom, but in Commodore Sloat Elementary School’s garden their attention was captured.

“It doesn’t take much to get kids thinking,” said Christine Leishman, who led the effort to transform a patch of barren earth in her son’s schoolyard into a garden. Leishman was prompted to act four years ago by a group of teachers who were gardening out of pots in their classrooms. Others quickly pitched-in. The Commodore Sloat’s Parent Teacher Organization financed a part-time garden educator; local businesses donated materials; parents have helped with maintenance; and 16 teachers at the school are now integrating gardening into their curricula.

The transformation was not merely physical. Leishman, who taught some of the gardening classes, recalls small moments that prove the garden’s worth to her. A Russian girl who didn’t speak English lit up at the sight of something familiar to her: potatoes and beets. Chinese grandparents who’d never visited the school stopped by to drop off bok choy seeds culled from their own gardens. Troublemakers suddenly found new focus. Picky eaters tried salads made from garden vegetables. The patch of earth is now a central meeting place, where kids show parents their latest projects, and parents and teachers can mingle after school.

“The garden is a tremendous learning tool,” Leishman said. Planting seeds leads to a class discussion of life cycles, a hillside garden demonstrates erosion prevention, and a small weather station illustrates microclimates. Art is central too, with a students creating a mosaic and writing garden-centered poetry. The learning also extends beyond curriculum standards, by encouraging kids to grow up as environmental stewards.

“I had no idea that there was anyone else in the world doing this when I started,” Leishman said. But then she saw a flyer for a San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance (SFGSA) conference. At the event she realized that different schools doing gardening projects could learn from each other. She began trading ideas with others, including Arden Buckin-Sporer, then the garden educator at Alice Fong Yu, and now the district-wide garden educator.

“Making sure plans have long-term vision is so important,” according to Leishman. Since its inception in 2001, SFGSA has helped develop that vision for all San Francisco elementary schools. By hosting conferences with practical workshops on building garden structures, integrating garden lessons into course curricula, and finding funding for schoolyard gardens, SFGSA supports communication and collaboration among schoolyard garden enthusiasts.

According to Nan McGuire, a SFGSA leader, raising awareness about the importance of schoolyard gardens and organizing the conferences have been big accomplishments. Another important success was the passage of the 2003 Proposition A Bond that authorized the district to spend $2 million (of $295 million total) to rebuild outdoor areas for environmental learning at 17 schools, including Commodore Sloat. “The district’s bond manager really understands the value” of greening schoolyards, according to McGuire.

Across the city from Commodore Sloat Elementary, Sherman Elementary has spent the past year planning to tear up asphalt in two of the school’s yards and create more natural environments with Prop. A funds.

The school’s smaller 4,050 square-foot lot will be converted into a quiet green space, with winding walkways and raised gardening beds. Along Franklin Street, in a yard more than three times as large, a series of rolling hills and ramps that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act will be created. A grove of trees and native grasses will help buffer street sounds and car exhaust and serve as a play area where kids can climb on boulders.

“The design is driven by community involvement,” according to project architect Richard Parker of 450 Architects, who has attended planning meetings with parents, teachers, and the school principal since last July. “This is the fun stuff in life and in architecture,” Parker explains, adding that he aims to work with the natural topography that’s hidden among the usual straight lines that dominate our constructed landscape. “Nature doesn’t have that many straight lines,” he says.

For Lynn Fuller, project facilitator and parent of a kindergartener at the school, the garden at Tule Elk Park Child Development Center is a model schoolyard garden. “It is indescribably pleasant to go into the garden,” she says, adding that kids from the “densest square mile west of the Mississippi” that spans Russian Hill, Nob Hill, and Chinatown can benefit more from interacting with a school garden than simply going to a park.

Sherman Elementary’s garden plan articulates that “Perhaps the most powerful lesson that city kids can learn in a school garden is that the natural environment is not ‘out there’ but is at our doorstep, even for those of us living in dense urban areas.” And that’s a lesson for us adults, too.

For additional information about the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance please visit http://www.sfgreenschools.org/index.html