1Running head: PLANTING SEEDS

Planting the Seeds of Sustainability

Katie Grams

Sustainability Minor Capstone

Emory University

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Abstract

As agricultural sustainability becomes more relevant in society, educating upcoming

generations on food production is becoming increasingly important as well. School gardens are

an avenue through which teachers and administrators attempt to educate students not only about

where food comes from, but to teach students about various biological processes as well. This

study seeks to explain how school gardens affect students’ perceptions of food and the

environment. It explores their goals, challenges, and successes through a literature review, a

semester-long case study at the school garden class at Burgess-Peterson Academy, and

interviews conducted with a number of leaders in school garden programming.

The results from my case study showed that students were enthusiastic about the

activities they participated in, from the lesson plans, to harvesting. Correspondents from my

interviews indicated a general agreement on the benefits and challenges of school gardens. Each

interviewee described resources, few trained teachers, and issues with core curriculum as

obstacles in maintaining functioning school gardens. The respondents varied in the benefits they

cited, but all reported that school gardens increased students’ willingness to eat vegetables. The

studies analyzed in this project suggest that school gardens increase vegetable intake, increase

awareness of biological processes, are multi-disciplinary, and make students more place-based.

However, long-term analyses of these proposed benefits are lacking and thus further research is

needed. Based on my research, school gardens can make students more place-based, aware of

nutrition, and aware of food production.

Keywords: school gardens, sustainability, agribusiness

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Introduction

There is a growing body of evidence proving that, environmentally, the earth is

deteriorating at an alarming rate. Because many of the reasons for the ecological dilemmas we

face are anthropogenic, people now realize that we must play a more active role in keeping this

ship we call home from sinking. Whether ameliorating the effects of climate change or

sustaining the earth’s resources, the welfare of the environment has become a main concern for

activists worldwide. The Brundtland Report of 1987 defines sustainability as meeting the needs

of the present without hindering future generations from meeting their own needs; based on this

definition, sustainability is a trans-generational issue by nature (United Nations, 1987).

Therefore, rearing environmentally conscious children should be a priority for pioneers and

leaders of sustainability. It is crucial to raise upcoming generations to have concern for the

welfare of the earth and for communities across the globe.

With this in mind, a key component of sustainable development ought to be the proper

education of younger generations. This first must be preceded by understanding what methods

are operative in teaching environmentalism to children. To accomplish this, it is necessary to

research the ways that sustainability can be effectively transmitted and communicated to

children. One avenue of sustainability curriculum that is currently being explored is school

gardens. These programs are being implemented nationwide and have a diversity of goals and

functions. If sustainable education is implemented in schools, it is important to understand its

goals, benefits, challenges, effects and efficacy.

My research explores the topic of food sustainability curriculum via school gardens in

order to understand its impact on students. In doing so, we can better understand the role of

garden and food education in shaping a student's values related to the earth and to sustainability.

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My hope is that this research contributes to knowledge about the impact of robust and

comprehensive food sustainability curriculum in schools. I argue that school gardens can make

students more place-based, more aware of how nutrition affects health, and more aware of how

food grows.

If this hypothesis holds true, then these benefits have broader implications for

agricultural sustainability as a whole. The perks that school gardens offer make food production

more transparent and make fresh, community-oriented food more appealing. As I will later

demonstrate, the main threat that agribusiness poses to the environment is a lack of transparency.

It is difficult to navigate the grocery store making sustainable purchases if you are unaware of

the source and manufacturing process of various food items. Hence, if school gardens do, in fact,

shape children into adults who care about the way that food is produced, they can influence the

market to offer products that reflect the food grown in the school gardens that they valued

growing up.

Methods

In order to address how school gardens influence students’ values and what this means

for sustainability, I chose to operate within three main vehicles of research: a literature review

summarizing published data on school gardens, a case study at a local school garden, and

interviews conducted with local and national leaders of school gardens. In the literature review

that follows, I synthesize data from ethnographic and statistical studies to examine common

themes among school gardens. My approach was to ascertain what the documented benefits and

effects, goals, and obstacles are of running a school garden (historically and presently). These

aspects of school gardens aid in my assessment and appraisal of how garden-based learning fits

within the larger framework of sustainability.

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My literature review was then further assessed through the lens of a local school garden.

From February 2016 to April 2016, I attended a school garden class at Burgess-Peterson

Academy, an Atlanta Public School. Through participant-observation and interviews, I gathered

data relevant to my research question. The data from my case study had a mutually informative

relationship with my literature review; I found that my field notes reflected findings already

published in my resources and that my resources were brought to life through what I observed at

Burgess-Peterson Academy. As the final component of my research, I interviewed experts and

leaders in school garden initiatives both nationally and local to the Atlanta community in order to

corroborate my field notes and literature review. Through these three methods of research, I

investigated the contexts in which school gardens exist and operate, the obstacles faced by

school administrators attempting to maintain functioning school gardens, the proposed benefits

of school gardens, how school gardens affect students’ perceptions of food and the earth, and

what the implications are of all of these findings.

History of School Gardens

Before we can understand how current school gardens function and what impact they

have on students, they must first be contextualized within the original educational philosophy

and goals that catalyzed their creation. Historically, school gardens were introduced in the

United States as early as the 1890s (Kohlstedt, 2008). They were implemented with an

assortment of goals in mind and as the political atmosphere of the Unites States shifted over the

decades, the goals and purposes of gardens shifted to reflect these changes. The original garden

philosophy advocated by educational leaders John Dewey and Maria Montessori claimed that

school gardens would foster healthy childhood development and good moral character (Ralston,

2011). Dewey (1900) felt that gardens should be an integral part of education and that a school

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building “ought to be in a garden and the children in the garden would be led on to surrounding

fields, and then into the wider country, with all its facts and forces,” (p.68). From this

perspective, school gardens were a way of exposing students early on to the splendor of nature.

Outdoor education offers children a method of learning beyond what can be discovered through

textbook learning. In this respect, school gardens were first introduced in the United States as a

means of interactive learning and non-classroom instruction.

Research published on historical school gardens shows that they reflected much of the

philosophy that was touted by Dewey and Montessori. For example, Kohlstedt’s article, “A

Better Crop of Boys and Girls,” argues that school gardens emerged as a way of integrating the

theoretical knowledge taught in schools with how students would eventually need to engage in

the world in reality (2008). Through her examination of school gardens that existed in the United

States in the 1890s, she found that gardens offered students an avenue for cultivating their

curiosity and engaging them in social learning. She claims that “the skill of the instructor, the

involvement of the pupils, the nature of the sites available, and the kinds of tools and other

supports provided by the school and community,” were all factors that made school gardens

inherently customizable (p. 60). Because school gardens existed across all of the U.S., they

represented a multitude of backgrounds, demographics, and socioeconomic levels. Kohlstedt

attributes the widespread success of early school gardens to this versatility because they were

able to cater to the needs of the communities they were in (2008).

Even those who were involved in early school gardens gave firsthand accounts of their

successes. An example of this can be found in Bennet’s article, “Municipal School Gardens,

Philadelphia,” written in 1906, which is the primary account of the successes, intentions, and

obstacles of two school gardens. This article outlines, compares, and contrasts the two gardens,

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one located in Weccacoe square “a bare lot awaiting improvement”, the other on Lansdowne

Avenue, a street located in a “semi-suburban neighborhood, of middle class Americans,” (p.429).

Her analysis states that despite the contrasts between the two programs, both of the school

gardens she examined were highly successful and moreover, that they were successful in specific

and comparable ways. She documents that both gardens reported superb attendance as well as a

massive harvest. The attendance that was recorded at each garden indicates the ability of

municipal gardens to rally a community of young individuals together for a common cause. Her

article demonstrated that both school gardens taught students information regarding the life

cycles of pests, how to deal with pests, and how to tend to the earth. Both gardens served as an

interactive classroom in which children learned about academic subjects through hands-on

learning (Bennet, 1906).

In later years, during World War I, the “U.S. School Garden Army” was implemented in

order to provide additional food for Americans. Philander Claxton, who was the Federal

Education Commissioner at the time, understood the benefits of community gardening. Public

and organizational support already existed for school gardens, and Claxton was not alone in

admiring the ways that school gardens were able to enrich the work ethic of the nation’s youth

and foster communal learning. Claxton lamented the impediments that came with the territory of

managing and functioning effective gardens, so he saw the war as an opportunity to promote the

spread of school gardens. With his help, gardens found their way into communities across

America and were seen as the American child’s duty to promote the war effort (Kohlstedt, 2008).

During this period of American history, there was a clear shift in the intentions of school gardens

that reflected the political climate of the day; the purposes of American school gardens shifted

from community engagement to a way of supplementing food shortages (Desmond, Grieshop, &

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Subramaniam, 2002, p.35). When the war ended, school gardens were often not maintained and

in many instances they were completely abandoned. For this period of American history, the

potential of school gardens remained untapped.

As seen in these examples, school gardens across time attempted to instill a variety of

values and attitudes pertinent to their communities, ranging from an appreciation of the natural

world to a civic duty to the American people. The diversity of these examples shows that school

gardens are intrinsically malleable structures that can be used as a vehicle to transmit any given

information to a student. This has important implications for how we understand the way school

gardens have functioned in the past as well as how they can be understood now. In the diversity

of school gardens lies the potential to educate students about sustainability and the way the earth

works. Following in the footsteps of the first gardens established in the United States,

contemporary school gardens serve a variety of functions and are implemented to accomplish a

variety of goals.

Contemporary School Gardens

In recent years, school gardens have reemerged as a means of interactive learning (as of

2013, 26.6% of U.S. public elementary schools have garden-based learning programs) (Turner,

Sandoval, & Chaloupka, 2014); they have been the topic of question in numerous studies,

quantitative and qualitative alike. School gardens are quite literally taking root all over the nation

and many consider them to be an indispensible resource for childhood enrichment. Advocates

nationwide tout the benefits of school gardens, ranging from nutritional enrichment to mitigating

sensory deprivation (Boyle, 2013). Today, school gardens are often implemented as a means of

increasing vegetable consumption in students, as a means of interactive learning for unrelated

academic topics (such as spelling and reading comprehension), and as a means of teaching

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students about the rhythms of biological cycles and how to be a steward of the earth (Boyle,

2013).

Desmond et al., authors of Revisiting Garden Based Learning in Basic Education, a

book outlining the history and current state of school gardens, further argue the benefits of

garden philosophy and learning (2002). They cite Rousseau, who:

described the defect of teaching a child 'about' things rather than the things themselves.

He stated: ‘You think you are teaching what the world is like; he is only learning the

map.’ Rousseau emphasized the importance of nature in education stating that nature

was the child's greatest teacher and that ‘his knowledge of the natural world serves as a

foundation for his later learning’ (cited in Sealy, 2001). (p.34)

This reflects back to John Dewey’s philosophy that textbook instruction, while useful and

necessary, is not adequate or sufficient enough to truly enrich a child’s senses.

Desmond et al. also claim that school gardens provide a framework for students to learn

about sustainability dilemmas. They draw on the wisdom of Robin Moore, Director of Natural

Learning Initiative at North Carolina State University, stating,

Moore (1995) suggests that children's gardening can be introduced with the broader

frame of reference of sustainable development, regenerative design, and bio-design. He

argues that children, the future consumers and participants of democracy must interact

daily with an educational environment containing a diversity of living ecosystems.

(p.36)

Through this interdisciplinary approach that Desmond et al. and Moore claim that school gardens

offer, students can better understand the symbiosis of the earth’s ecosystem and can be better

prepared to take on and offer solutions to the sustainability issues of the future.

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According to a 2011 study done by Ellen Skinner and Una Chi called, “Intrinsic

Motivation and Engagement as ‘Active Ingredients’ in Garden-Based Education: Examining

Models and Measures Derived From Self-Determination Theory,” school gardens, when

successful, will engage a diversity of academic topics in their curriculum. This article draws on

the history of school gardens and the varieties and commonalities within them to test what is

common across successful school gardens. A model that Skinner and Chi developed which

creates a concrete and consistent measurement of key concepts of school gardens found that

engaging curriculum and prior motivation are the main components of garden-based education.

In other words, students who perceive a sense of independence within and a contribution to a

garden are more likely to be engaged in the garden (Skinner & Chi, 2011).

The model they created serves as a framework for quantitative analysis to determine

what processes occur in the social contexts of school gardens. This model is based around a five-

point survey which was administered to middle school teachers and students that measured

engagement, achievement, outcomes and competence in the school garden. The survey found

that a multiplicity of structures exist within garden-based curriculum as well as a perceived

autonomy of students engaged in food sustainability curriculum (Skinner & Chi, 2011). This

finding is interesting because it has implications for my interpretation of my hypothesis: that the

benefits of school gardens will positively influence public support for agricultural sustainability.

If this is true, then this study is provocative because it could suggest that the sense of

independence and contribution previously mentioned might too boost support for agricultural

sustainability. In other words, the rewards of personal engagement with and control over food

will serve as positive reinforcement for local or transparent food options. Therefore, it might also

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make conventionally produced food less appealing to consumers who had prior exposure to

school gardens.

Others, still, claim that school gardens increase student awareness of the ecosystem’s

processes and thus foster a sense of connection to and dependence on the earth. In Shira

Brynjegard’s 2001 book, School Gardens: Raising Environmental Awareness in Children, she

compiles data from prior studies and observations on school gardens as well as her own

experiences as a teacher to discuss why school gardens are implemented in schools and what

benefits they have. Her review of literature takes a philosophical approach, drawing from several

schools of thought, such as Hinduism and educational psychology. Brynjegard’s main argument

is that only through guided, experiential learning can students come to cultivate a concrete

relationship with the earth. She further argues that the intricacies of the dynamics between

parents and administration will have a lasting impact on how any kind of curriculum will affect a

student (Brynjegard, 2001).

Echoing Dewey’s philosophy and Brynjegard’s findings, a review by Julie Ernst of the

book Research in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability: International Perspectives and

Provocations, suggests that to effectively train the upcoming generation to be pioneers of

environmental welfare, educators must transmit more than just factual knowledge to children.

They must go above and beyond to teach children the skills to be sustainable leaders rather than

just giving them head knowledge. Ernst also warns educators to not teach their students to only

worry about environmental issues or to teach them the opposite, to have impractical idealisms

regarding sustainable solutions to environmental crises. School gardens are useful in this respect

because interactive learning goes beyond head knowledge. Garden-based learning allows for

students to engage with the earth and learn through real-world experience. By becoming

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connected to the surrounding environment, students can have better idea of what is practical to

expect of the earth and why it matters (Ernst, 2015).

Another suggestion for accomplishing Ernst’s proposal comes from an article written by

Julie Wakefield called “Environmental Education: Teaching Sustainability.” She proposes

engaging students directly in nature in order to become more place-based and aware of their role

in the ecosystem. One such example of this program that Wakefield documents is a community

bird-watching initiative that paired urban K-12 students with researchers at Cornell University.

Another method she suggests is to teach sustainability in a way that examines the

interconnectedness of the ecosystem and human behavior (Wakefield, 2003). Another relevant

article called “Reason and Reenchantment in Cultural Change: Sustainability in Higher

Education” written by Dr. Peggy Barlett calls for an almost spiritual revival in terms of respect

for the environment as an approach to tackle the political issues associated with sustainability.

She suggests that an extensive paradigm shift is necessary to generate creative, original, and

innovative solutions to sustainability issues (Barlett, 2008).

Other studies which focus on quantifiable measures of behavior change document

further impacts that school gardens may have other than what has been found in studies

measured in more qualitative terms. These primarily included increased vegetable consumption

and literacy, as well as improvements in academics. For example, Evans et. al’s 2012 study,

“Exposure to Multiple Components of a Garden-Based Intervention for Middle School Students

Increases Fruit and Vegetable Consumption,” considered the relationship between garden-based

learning and food preference. The aims of this study were to prove that student involvement in

school gardens promotes the consumption of fruits and vegetables and to identify which

components of school gardens influence fruit and vegetable intake. The metrics they used for this

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study were fruit and vegetable preference, motivation to eat fruits and vegetables, amount of

consumption, and preference for unhealthy foods. They conducted studies in five

demographically various middle schools to test the following components of food sustainability

curriculum: class curriculum, farm field trips, after-school gardening, school interaction with

farmers, and farm-to-school programs. Evans et al. found that there is a positive correlation with

fruit and vegetable intake and knowledge of vegetables and exposure students had to school or

community gardens. They also documented a negative correlation between exposure to gardens

and preference for unhealthy foods (Evans et al., 2012).

Another study by Morgan et al. conducted in 2010 called, “The Impact of Nutrition

Education with and without a School Garden on Knowledge, Vegetable Intake and Preferences

and Quality of School Life among Primary-school Students,” took a quantitative ethnobotanical

approach to the questions of how school gardens affect student intake of fruits and vegetables,

what vegetables they prefer, what knowledge they have of various plants, and how this affects

their academics. They conducted a case study in Australia of fifth and sixth graders and

examined the differences between garden and nutrition education versus nutrition only

education. The study found that students of garden and nutrition education had greater preference

and willingness to taste fruits and vegetables. The results were too complicated to conclusively

claim whether or not there was a difference between nutrition only and nutrition and garden

education in terms of knowledge of plants and willingness to taste specific vegetables, such as

peppers, broccoli, tomatoes and peas (Morgan et al., 2010).

Hermann et al.’s 2006 study, “After-School Gardening Improves Children’s Reported

Vegetable Intake and Physical Activity,” claimed that school gardens fully immerse and engage

students in nutrition and food choices, which then lead to healthier lifestyles in terms of food and

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activity choices. The study found that through a survey administered to teachers in schools that

had gardening programs, these programs included a nutritional component in the curriculum and

that they influenced the dietary habits of students. Surveys administered to students pre- and

post-exposure to gardening programs found that there was an increase in physical activity and

fruit and vegetable intake (Hermann, Parker, Brown, Denney, & Walker, 2006).

Interestingly, there is also evidence to suggest that school gardens increase test scores as

well. The study “Impact of Garden-Based Learning on Academic Outcomes in Schools:

Synthesis of Research Between 1990 and 2010,” by Williams and Dixon, tests the relationship

between academic success and exposure to school gardens. The authors selected 48 qualifying

articles written between the years 1990-2010 that addressed the question of how garden-based

curriculums affect the academic achievements of students. They found that garden-based

learning positively influenced scientific achievement especially, but also mathematic

performance and language arts (however, language arts showed the least improvement among

the three). They also concluded that social development was the most prolific non-academic

outcome of school gardens (Williams & Dixon, 2013).

Even though there is an immense amount of research that has been done in the field of

school garden curriculums and their effects on students, most experts say that there are holes in

the current body of research. Some of the problems that have been lamented in the various

studies are lack of documentation regarding the effects school gardens have on the sustainability

of student lifestyles, lack of documentation of attitude changes, etc. Most overwhelmingly,

however, my sources say that there is a wealth of qualitative analyses (and more humanities-

oriented rather than social science-oriented, in particular) while there is a dearth of robust long-

term analyses to attribute causality to school gardens for their perceived benefits.

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For instance, in an article by Emily Ozer, called “The Effects of School Gardens on

Students and Schools: Conceptualization and Considerations for Maximizing Healthy

Development,” she claims that what many proponents of school gardens say are the benefits of

gardens are hard to document. Ozer’s article argues that the proposed benefits of school gardens

have not been empirically tested and are therefore unreliable; she is not alone in this sentiment

either (2007). Other school garden researchers, too, have suggested that current published

research is lacking. In the Williams and Dixon article discussed earlier, they also claim that

systematic, empirical, and quantitative research must be conducted to come to more conclusive

results (2013).

Proponents of school gardens claim that gardens enrich academics, improve nutrition

and vegetable intake, are multi-disciplinary, are hands-on, engaging, and place-based, and lend

themselves to sociological study (Barlett, 2008; Brynjegard, 2001; Ernst, 2015; Hermann et al.,

2006; Morgan et al., 2010; Thorp & Townsend, 2001; Wakefield, 2003; Williams & Dixon,

2013). As this literature review has shown, these claims are typically substantiated. However,

this literature review has also shown that many claim that research into school gardens is

wanting and therefore, the proposed benefits are not guaranteed or proven. A simple search on

the internet will produce case study after case study documenting the impact a school garden has

on a particular set of students (sometimes, even studies on a collection of gardens). However, the

issue with this research is that, usually, its parameters are not wide enough to be incontrovertible.

For instance, it is challenging to comprehend how impacts of school gardens might carry out into

adulthood because people are often unavailable or unwilling to be studied for the duration of

their lives.

School gardens do not easily lend themselves to empirical or numerical study beyond

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measures of things such as vegetable intake. Attitudinal changes, long-term impacts, and

perceptions of sustainability are not as easy to quantify. Hence, most of the studies that have

been conducted on the impacts of school gardens do not have statistics attached to them. While

these arguments are valuable and necessary, they should not stand alone. Quantitative studies

should corroborate and complement non-empirical arguments.

Still, there are issues with the quantitative analyses that have been conducted. Because

some of the perceived or observed benefits of school gardens are difficult to quantify or difficult

to isolate for study (i.e. attitude changes, impacts on communities), most quantitative studies

only reveal changes regarding dietary patterns of students. Additionally, it is hard to control for

the variables of school gardens. For instance, it is not easy to determine if schools with gardens

report higher test scores because they have school gardens or because they have more resources

than schools without gardens. These issues are important to address and frame within the context

of my research.

Burgess-Peterson Academy Case Study

In order to see concrete evidence of the results found in my literature review, I

conducted a case study at a school garden over the course of three months. My purpose was to

document the effects of the school garden in order to serve as a basis of comparison for the

findings in my literature review. My case study involved weekly participant observation at the

School Garden Café class at Burgess-Peterson Academy where I would participate in the daily

educational activity and help to harvest and plant the food. I was able to become involved

through Slow Food Atlanta’s school garden volunteering program, which is partnered with

Burgess-Peterson Academy.

The garden class operated on a rotational basis in which different grades would

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participate in the garden class each week. During the garden class, students typically engaged in

four different activities: a lesson plan (this would vary in topic each week, depending on age),

harvesting a crop, preparing and eating a snack centered around the harvested crop, and planting

seeds of a crop they would harvest later. Occasionally, they would learn about various aspects of

gardening (i.e. soil composition, school garden history). Other times, the lesson plan would focus

on the plant that they were eating that day, which would generally be the case for the younger

students.

To illustrate, one of the weeks of my participant observation, the pre-school students

harvested bell peppers. Their lesson plan that day was to learn the difference between bell

peppers, chili peppers, and black pepper. In addition, that week they learned how healthy foods

affected their bodies as compared to unhealthy foods. A different week, the third grade students

at BPA learned about the history of school gardens in order to teach them the difference between

fact and opinion statements. That week, they also harvested Brussels sprouts and made tacos

with them. By and large, Burgess-Peterson Academy’s school garden has been an overwhelming

success and even received attention from First Lady Michelle Obama, who paid the garden a

visit to celebrate the first anniversary of the Let’s Move initiative in 2011.

The students at Burgess-Peterson Academy were generally very enthusiastic and they

welcomed my participation with them each Wednesday morning. In fact, I was colloquially

referred to as ‘the garden lady’ by many of the students. Because a different grade would be

participating in the garden each week, I would typically need to introduce myself to the class,

inform the students of why I was there, and describe what I would be doing with them. Most

weeks, the class would begin the day by heading out into BPA’s organic garden to harvest a

particular vegetable. The garden is located in a courtyard seated in the heart of the school. There

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are a number of crop beds organized into approximately a third of the garden where the students

harvested the food. A number of chickens are also raised in the garden, which the students had

the opportunity to name.

Image 1. First graders at BPA harvest radishes with Mrs. Michelle, the teacher in charge of the school garden.

The vegetable that was harvested on any given week would then be prepared into a

snack for the students. One week the students enjoyed kale pesto and another week they enjoyed

a Swiss chard and red pepper dish. While some students expressed reservations and concern

when trying new foods, most of the time, they were amenable to the prospect of having a snack

and typically enjoyed what they were being served. Many of the students were incredibly

enthusiastic about the harvesting process, specifically. The week that the third graders harvested

Brussels sprouts, the teacher allowed each student to harvest only one sprout. However, they

were quite voracious when selecting the sprout to harvest. Despite the strict single-sprout

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maximum, many of them had a hard time adhering to that limitation. One young student was so

excited about harvesting that she pocketed several sprouts when she thought there were no adults

looking. Depending on the age and ability of the students as well as the nature of the recipe being

made, sometimes they would help prepare the food while other times a staff member would

prepare the food alone.

While their snack was being prepared, the school garden class teacher would begin her

lesson plan and activity for the day. During one of the garden classes, kindergarten students were

learning how to read in the class by learning to spell words like kale or soil. They were then

tested on their ability to identify the words that they were reading and writing. Older students

learned more advanced material; their lesson plan was more involved in the actual processes of

growing food as well as understanding what the purposes of school gardens are. The third grade

class learned about the U.S. School Garden Army while the fifth grade class learned about the

difference between humus, Georgia clay, and sand as well as which soils were more conducive

to gardening and why.

Image 2. Teachers at Burgess-Peterson Academy use the garden as an interactive classroom to teach children important skills such as reading and writing.

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As the students got older, they seemed to be better at articulating what it was about the

school garden class that they enjoyed and felt they were learning. During my interactions with

the students, I interviewed a third grade class on their experiences with the school garden. When

I asked them if they enjoyed the class, or if they were more willing to eat fruits and vegetables

because of the class, they responded with a scattered yes, but an overall yes, nevertheless.

However, when I asked them if the class made them care more about the earth and the

environment, I was met with a loud, enthusiastic, and unanimous “Yes!” As a whole, students at

BPA valued the school garden class and were always motivated to learn about different fruits

and vegetables, learn about how food grows, harvest the food, and above all else, eat the food.

Image 3. This is a photograph of my participant-observation at Burgess-Peterson Academy; here, I am teaching students to plant purple basil seeds.

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Though it was not within the scope of my case study to collect data on vegetable intake,

motivation, or test scores, I did see correlates of the findings of my literature review in my case

study. The observations from my field notes have several common components with studies

published on school gardens. The causal relationship that was self-reported by the students

between priority placed on the earth and the BPA garden class appears to be a direct reflection of

Brynjegard’s claim that experiential learning is the main vehicle to foster a tangible connection

with the earth. I also noticed parallels between BPA and Bennet’s 1906 primary account of

Philadelphia municipal gardens; they each were comprised of enthusiastic students and they

taught both earth-related topics among other academic subjects. This aspect of the BPA garden

class could also illustrate why Williams and Dixon found that school gardens improved

academic success; as an interactive classroom, school gardens serve as an alternative to

traditional modes of learning. Using an engaging activity, such as gardening, to teach core

subjects might present a student with a new way of understanding that they might not otherwise

have the opportunity to explore.

I was also able to document a sense of ownership among the students, which may be

indicative that the BPA garden is similar to the garden studied in Skinner and Chi’s 2011 article.

The students were able to track the progress of crops they had planted and enjoyed speculating

which sprouting vegetable was the one that they had planted. They took pride in seeing their

plants grow from seed to harvest and it taught them the benefits of investment and delayed

gratification, a result consistent with the aims of the U.S. School Garden Army (Desmond et al.,

2002; Kohlstedt, 2008). Their willingness to eat vegetables seemed to corroborate the evidence

from Evans et al., Morgan et al, and Hermann et al. Potentially, the lessons where they learned

about specific vegetables (i.e. the bell/chili/black pepper lesson plan) could corroborate the

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Evans et al. finding in particular that suggests that exposure to school gardens improves a

student’s ability to identify different fruits and vegetables. (Evans et al., 2012; Hermann et al.,

2006; Morgan et al., 2010).

Interviews with Sustainability Leaders

To complement the data I gathered from Burgess-Peterson Academy as well as from

published literature, I conducted interviews with a number of school garden leaders in order to

test whether they could or could not corroborate data I had found, in addition to offering new

insights to my research. Their perspectives on school gardens are salient to my research and are a

means of providing firsthand accounts of the logistics, successes, and failures of school gardens

from those who are qualified to give these accounts. My interviewees include Emily Cumbie-

Drake of Georgia Organics, Jenna Mobley of Springdale Park Elementary School, Kyla Van

Deusen of the Captain Planet Foundation, and Lauren Howe of Slow Food USA. For all but

Mobley’s interview, which was in person, the interviews were conducted over the phone.

Through a series of questions, they each discussed their views of school gardens given the

experiences they had working with them.

Cumbie-Drake is a farm-to-school Director with Georgia Organics, covering the whole

state of Georgia. She served as the Sustainability Program Coordinator at Emory University for

three years prior to this position and is an Emory alumnus. This position entailed facilitating

Student Sustainability Forums and other similar programs in order to promote sustainability

initiatives on campus. While at Emory, some of her accomplishments included helping promote

and facilitate Emory’s Pollinator Protector Initiative, and helping to run the Green Bean Coffee

Cart, a Fair Trade and Organic certified coffee producer on Emory’s campus. At Georgia

Organics, she hopes to help encourage access to sustainable produce for Georgia residents by

23PLANTING SEEDS

securing connections between farmers and businesses and organizations (personal

communication, April 14, 2016; Hatfield, 2015).

My second respondent, Jenna Mobley, was formerly a second-grade teacher at

Springdale Park and currently works with the Community Farmers’ Markets. In addition she runs

the “Tending Our Common Ground Blog,” which is centered on the program initiatives she helps

facilitate and coordinate at Springdale Park related to food sustainability. She has taught at a

primary school in Ghana, a shelter in Ireland, and an orphanage in Tanzania. She is also working

towards a graduate degree in behavior and learning disabilities. While at Springdale Park, she

has worked to incorporate food into the curriculum via school gardens. She hopes to educate

students in a way that is fully immersive and engaging so that children can be involved in all of

the processes related to gardening, planting, harvesting, and eventually, eating. She also serves

on the Wellness Committee in order facilitate food sustainability initiatives at Springdale Park

Elementary School in Atlanta (personal communication, March 5, 2016; Mobley, n.d.).

Kyla Van Deusen of the Captain Planet Foundation is the program manager with the

Project Learning Garden. She holds a Master’s from the University of Minnesota in agriculture.

She has run various garden programs for youths in the city of Atlanta, whether those are school

gardens or community gardens. Some of these projects include serving at the Wylde Center as

the Youth Programs Manager where she managed garden programs for children and young

adults in the city of Decatur, or serving as a Community Environmental Educator where she

managed a community garden in Edgewood. Van Deusen is a current member of the Atlanta

Local Food Initiative committee which plans the trajectory of future sustainable food initiatives

in the city of Atlanta (personal communication, April 8 2016).

24PLANTING SEEDS

My final respondent, Lauren Howe, is the National School Garden Program Manager of

Slow Food USA and an alumnus of Hamilton College where she served as a coordinator and

student researcher for the Real Food Challenge as well as the co-founder and co-president of her

school’s chapter of Slow Food. She was a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in the 2013-2014 school

year and studied abroad in Tanzania, India, Bhutan, Bolivia, the Netherlands and Iceland to do

an independent project in sustainable food (personal communication, February 24, 2016;

“National Office Staff,” n.d.).

While each of my interviewees described similar characteristics of school gardens, I saw

the most consensus on what the obstacles were that they faced. Cumbie-Drake, for example, said

that many farm-to-school programs face issues with resources and curriculum compatibility.

There is often not enough funding to maximize the benefits that school gardens can offer. The

curriculum generally poses an issue as well; whatever the goals of a school garden may be, they

must operate within the confines of the Common Core standards (personal communication, April

14, 2016). During Mobley’s interview, she reported similar obstacles that Springdale Park faces

in trying to maintain the garden and teach what they think ought to be taught to the students.

Because Springdale Park is part of the Atlanta Public School system, there are certain standards

that the curriculum must meet that make it difficult for teachers to pursue specific educational

goals. Additionally, lack of resources also posed a problem (personal communication, March 5,

2016).

Some of the obstacles Van Deusen reported that school gardens face are time and

justification. She said that often, a garden class will have a little under an hour to complete a full

lesson, including the time it takes to transport kids to the garden and get them settled down and

ready for the lesson. This leaves little time to actually harvest, plant and teach for the remainder

25PLANTING SEEDS

of the class time. It is also difficult to justify having a school garden, according to Van Deusen

(personal communication, April 8, 2016). Echoing Cumbie-Drake and Mobley, she also said

that, often, courses are designed to teach in order to test; so, school gardens must comply with

this kind of curriculum, even if their only goal is to provide children with green space. She also

noted that recently, Georgia state legislation voted to only test science in fifth grade rather than

third grade. This makes garden-based learning, which improves science test scores, hard to

justify for third grade students. Howe reflected similar sentiments in her interview as well. She

reported that there are many limitations to the successes of school gardens. Like the other

respondents, among these obstacles were incompatible goals with school boards and Common

Core requirements, lack of funding, and inability of many schools to implement truly robust

school garden programs (personal communication, February 24, 2016).

I found more diversity in the benefits they reported, which could possibly be attributed

to the fact that, as discussed earlier in the 2008 Kohlstedt article, school gardens are diverse and

specific to the communities they are created for. What was exciting to Cumbie-Drake about

farm-to-school programs is that they connect students and schools with local farmers, engaging

them more with their community at home. She, along with Georgia Organics’ other farm-to-

school coordinator, Abbie King, both felt excited about the trajectory of school gardens. There

are some schools they noted that are implementing urban agriculture programs for high school

students, to provide them with resources and opportunities to get involved in sustainable careers

in the future. The other benefits they noted were that school gardens made students much more

willing to eat fruits and vegetables because they are able to see and be a part of the growing

process (personal communication, April 14, 2016). This sentiment was of particular interest to

26PLANTING SEEDS

me because it appeared to resonate with Skinner and Chi’s findings regarding the correlation

between personal investment in a garden and the willingness to engage in it (2011).

For Mobley’s interview, I visited Springdale Park, a LEED Gold certified building, to

examine their organic school garden and determine how it differed from the Burgess-Peterson

Academy school garden. Mobley explained that the garden is completely student run in order to

cultivate a sense of ownership in the student body (another nod to the 2011 findings of Skinner

and Chi). This provides unique benefits to their Springdale Park garden that might help to

explain the variation in responses I received from my interviewees. The garden, she said, may be

a little messy and rough around the edges, but it is a student creation and has fostered an

increased awareness of the interconnectedness of ecosystems. Through the Springdale Park

school garden, students learn about drip irrigation, recycling, composting, and ecosystem

services (i.e. pollination provided by bees), among other topics related to agricultural

sustainability. The Springdale Park school garden is an excellent example of garden-based

learning that is used to specifically teach kids about the way the earth functions (personal

communication, March 5, 2016). It is also an example of the findings from Brynjegard, Ernst,

and Wakefield at work. As a reminder, their research called for interactive learning as a means of

improving awareness of ecosystem processes. (Brynjegard, 2001; Ernst, 2015; Wakefield, 2003).

Van Deusen also reported unique benefits of garden-based learning. School gardens,

according to Van Deusen, are the first interaction students (and even teachers) have with seeing

food produced. She even noted that “on a smaller scale, they are observing life and death for the

first time,” (personal communication, April 8, 2016). Some of the benefits of school gardens she

claimed were that they improved test scores (particularly in math and science), helped kids learn

and develop a palette for healthy food, impacted behavior over a lifetime, and caused teachers to

27PLANTING SEEDS

report higher job satisfaction. Van Deusen’s reports reflect the philosophic grounds of garden-

based learning advocated by Dewey and Montessori on the importance of being exposed to

nature (Desmond et al., 2002; Kohlstedt, 2008). Additionally, it also corroborates the findings of

Evans et al., Morgan et al., Hermann et al., and Williams and Dixon regarding academic

achievement, vegetable intake, and vegetable preference (personal communication, April 8,

2016). (Evans et al., 2012; Hermann et al., 2006; Morgan et al., 2010; Williams & Dixon, 2013).

Howe’s current employment extends beyond the locale of my other respondents, as she

oversees gardening programs nationwide with Slow Food USA. This contributed to a somewhat

different report of school gardens compared to my other respondents. She discussed Slow Food’s

investment in school gardens as a means of crafting increasingly sustainable futures by

promoting sustainability curriculums in schools. For Slow Food, school gardens represent their

values and missions as an organization. Slow Food encourages reconnecting with the earth and

our food to combat the opacity of the industrialized food system. The organization places an

emphasis on knowing where our food comes from and engaging in the process of producing it,

which is exactly why Slow Food supports school gardens, according to Howe. More directly than

my other interviews, Howe’s answers corroborate my hypothesis regarding the implications of

the benefits of garden-based learning (personal communication, February 24, 2016).

The results from my interviews indicate an overwhelming consensus on the obstacles

that school gardens face. Each interviewee described lack of adequate funds, few trained

teachers, and issues with core curriculum as obstacles in maintaining functioning school gardens.

Though the respondents varied in the benefits they cited, they all reported that school gardens

increased students’ willingness to eat vegetables. The data from my interviews further

28PLANTING SEEDS

substantiates and brings life to my case study at Burgess-Peterson Academy as well as to the

sources reviewed in this paper.

The results from my interviews back many of my findings at Burgess-Peterson. As per

Cumbie-Drake’s interview, the students at BPA were more excited to eat fruits and vegetables

because they had been a part of the process. Though my case study did not have the hindsight to

document whether or not the growing process definitively influenced willingness to try new

foods, it did appear as though the harvesting and preparation processes (at least the observation

thereof) motivated students to eat the vegetables. Also, my case study substantiated the claims

my interviewees made regarding the multidisciplinary nature of school gardens, given that the

lesson plans represented a wide variety of academic disciplines (i.e. reading comprehension,

geology, history).

However, my case study did not find many of the same obstacles that were reported by

my interviewees. This could be a result of a few different factors. I attended BPA’s garden class

for only three months, so I had no real opportunity to document high staff turnover, for example.

I also observed only one, well-funded garden class whereas my respondents all have experience

with multiple school gardens, sometimes on an administrative level. They would have a better

perspective on obstacles than I do based on the limited scope of my case study.

Results

While each of my three methods of research offered unique insights, there was a

substantial amount of overlap. Each common thread between my literature review, case study,

and interviews mutually reinforced the data I collected. From my literature review, I found that

school gardens increase vegetable intake, increases awareness of biological processes, are multi-

disciplinary, and make students more place-based. However, quantitative analyses of these

29PLANTING SEEDS

proposed benefits are lacking and thus further research is needed. My case study showed that

students reported satisfaction with the garden. They were enthusiastic about the activities they

participated in, from the lesson plans, to harvesting, to preparing and eating the food. Finally,

my interviewees reported both similar and diverging school garden characteristics, with the most

unanimity on the difficulties of maintaining school gardens.

In the tables below, I thematically illustrate characteristics of school gardens through the

data collected from each of my three research methods as well as a net analysis of data. I graphed

features of school gardens as a function of strength of correlation in recorded data, depending on

the method of research. In Table 1a, the plot of data for my literature review, the x-axis

represented ten features of school gardens: issue with school curriculum, lack of resources,

place-based, improved vegetable identification, interactive classroom, improved test scores, lack

of trained staff, taught values of investment, student sense of ownership, and improved vegetable

intake. The y-axis is a discrete five step measure of the strength of correlation of these given

characteristic through the data found in my literature review (for the aggregate graph, this is nine

steps). Below the x-axis indicates a negative correlation, the first step above represents slight

correlation, the next step represents moderate correlation, and the highest step represents strong

correlation. If there is no data above or below the x-axis, there was no correlation.

It should be noted that the negative correlates documented in Table 1b could be a result

of the brevity of my case study. I was unable to attend the school garden for a long enough

period of time to document any fundamental flaws in the school garden class, especially because

BPA’s garden is so well organized and managed. The net data recorded in Table 1d shows the

aggregate scores of each graph. Features with very high scores indicate a strong correlation in

each method of research, for example.

30PLANTING SEEDS

Table 1a. Results of literature review.

Table 1b. Results of case study.

31PLANTING SEEDS

Table 1c. Results of interviews.

Table 1d. Aggregate results of literature review, case study, and interviews.

Conclusion

The quest to make the world more sustainable is an uphill battle largely due to our

collective negligence and disrespect for the earth. Because tools like gardens and knowledge of

32PLANTING SEEDS

earth systems are not readily available to many people, it is hard for many to care about the

welfare of the planet (let alone to even know how to begin caring for the environment). The

relationship industrialized agriculture has cultivated with the earth is one of exploitation, abuse,

and opacity. Subsidized commodity crops as well as the externalized costs of agribusiness have

led to critical public health and environmental issues (i.e. obesity, antimicrobial resistance, loss

of biodiversity, etc.). However, everything that is characteristic of school gardens is at odds with

agribusiness. Each school garden is unique, whereas agribusiness encourages standardization and

monocultures. School gardens foster a deep connection with the earth and with food, whereas

agribusiness takes the food process out of the hands and eyesight of consumers, distancing

Americans from the earth. For these reasons, school gardens are a danger to the foundations of

agribusiness. Unfortunately, the agribusiness system is the norm; therefore, school gardens,

which are transparent and treat the earth with respect from seed to harvest, are subversive to and

threaten the very crux of this norm (Pollan, 2006).

In order to properly thrive on the planet, as a species, humans need to regard the earth

with a kind of Kierkegaardian fear and trembling; we are at the mercy of its ability to feed and

shelter us, not the reverse. School gardens plant the first seeds of this humility in children based

on the philosophy described by Dewey. My hope is that these metaphorical seeds, when properly

watered and cared for, will blossom into the profound respect the earth deserves. An education

which fails to equip students with the knowledge of how food affects health and how food

production affects the environment will produce another generation of Americans that buys

unsustainable, processed foods. The solution to these issues is to ensure awareness of topics

surrounding food, which is what well organized school gardens do. When students are exposed

to the kind of green space that gardens offer, they become better aware of what it takes for food

33PLANTING SEEDS

to grow. Becoming more aware of food systems from the roots up (literally) makes the world a

more sustainable place.

34PLANTING SEEDS

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