e-news

Nov 14, 2022

Support Informational Text Lessons with Garden + Pollinators

Teaching reading standards for informational text can be a challenge. Students have such a wide variety of interests it can be difficult to find one that engages all students. Pairing…

Sep 20, 2022

Soil your Undies

Healthy soil contains billions of microscopic organisms. Just one teaspoon of healthy soil contains more microbes than there are people on the planet! Soil microbes are constantly feeding on organic…

Sep 20, 2022

Soils 101: Why soil, not dirt?

Why is it that people like me (Doug) get bothered when someone refers to soil as “dirt”? Are there grounds for this minor irritation? (Perhaps.) Is it fair to expect…

Sep 20, 2022

Grow Your Soil

Last year our focus was on Social Emotional Learning; this year we will take a deep dive into soil. Each issue of our newsletter for the 2022-23 school year will include an…

May 27, 2022

Growing School Gardens Summit

Amy and Doug were presenters at the Growing School Gardens Summit in Denver, Colorado, April 22-25. The conference gathered 400 folks together who are invested in school gardens. Those 400 participants represented…

May 27, 2022

Lessons from the Garden

I am often amazed at how many life lessons we can learn from observing the garden and how plants communicate their needs. Consider these three unexpected ways that students may…

May 27, 2022

Growing Sweet Potato Slips

Sweet potatoes are typically started by planting bare-root vegetative cuttings that have just begun to grow roots. Sweet potatoes are our favorite crop to plant at the end of the…

Mar 27, 2022

What’s New in Your Garden?

One of the great things many of us enjoy about spring is all of the newness we see around us. Bulbs begin bursting into flower, numerous shades of green from lawn…

Mar 27, 2022

Write, Rip, Grow

I recently came across this quote by Sigmund Freud, “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.” Some of those uglier…