Design & Grow Your Gardens

It Starts With The Children

Designing a garden at a school or youth organization is more than creating a pleasant space where students and teachers can look at butterflies, pretty flowers or perhaps harvest some vegetables. It carries with it a sense of responsibility and realization that the enitre community, in a positive way, is impacting the future of every person who is involved in the project.

To ensure that the greatest benefits for all can be realized from the garden design process, consider the following:

1. Actively engage students in all aspects of the garden design process. By participating in their garden from the start, students will learn that their ideas are important, that they have a voice, and that individually and collectively they can make a positive difference in the world around them.

2. Long term, try to create a seamless web of continuous learning by growing garden programs to fit a child's education from elementary through high school.

3. In addition to the garden areas, think about how to use your location's entire property, its landscape, hardscape and surroundings as essential places for learning.

4. Be sure to employ indoor and outdoor spaces, elements and materials.

5. Children's gardens are not meant to be one-time stationary monuments. Refresh, redesign and/or expand them each year to meet the changing circumstances, student populations, interests and needs of your school or youth organization.

6. A place of learning ought to be the richest, most stimulating sensory environment possible. For a child to learn effectively, gardens and location properties should provide a wide variety of informational stimuli. Successful garden settings and surroundings will nurture and stimulate the spirit.

Connect Your Garden to the Classroom

Monthly Design Activities Guide

	Fall Design Tasks
	Winter Design Tasks
	Spring Design Tasks
	Summer Design Tasks