Building Culture

One new “ah ha” take-away from our completion of the Life Lab-Certified Garden Educator program was the tremendous importance of establishing events that build culture around the school garden. An annual pumpkin toss at an elementary school in Atlanta, Georgia, is one example that stood out. After Halloween, students (and even former students) bring their pumpkins from home and get to throw their pumpkins from the second floor of the school to the ground. While it certainly makes a big mess, more importantly, it’s a big addition to the school compost pile that helps sustain rich growing media in the garden. This single event is now a fun tradition that has helped establish a culture that the garden is important to their school.

Closer to home, Patriots Elementary School in Concord, NC, is promoting and establishing school garden culture by having a parade just before Thanksgiving. STEM teacher and parade organizer, Jill Staton, started this tradition the year before Covid impacted our world. She followed a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade model with students studying the history of the parade, reading the book, Balloons over Broadway, and learning about the science behind balloons, a mainstay of the Macy’s parade. The school parade was a real hit with the students.

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Not allowing Covid to totally thwart their plans in the second year, they had a virtual parade. This year the parade returned to the school campus featuring theschool garden with a portion of each grade level dressing up in fruit, vegetable and flower costumes that they made from cardboard and other repurposed materials. The rest of the student body (1,000+) lined the sidewalks around the school as the parade made its way through the mass of excited onlookers. We (Amy and Doug) were asked and honored to be Grand Marshalls for the parade.

A great way to begin building culture around your school garden is to think about how you can incorporate the school garden into schoolwide activities that already take place at your school. Here are a few more ideas for building culture around the garden.

• Have a read aloud or share bedtime stories in the garden during book fair week
• Include a tour of the garden on back-to-school night
• Host a GrandFriends tea party (grandparents or other special friends)
• Include the garden as a part of your school workdays (create a list of chores that parents and families can do on teacher workdays)
• Plant and plan for gift giving occasions, such as Secretary’s Day, Mother’s Day, or Staff/Custodian appreciation
• Share thank you flower bouquets
• Offer a pop-up Farmers Market for the car rider line
• Host graduation celebrations in the garden
• Read Across America…in the garden

We would love to hear about your culture building activities and events to add to our list.