The Jolly Roger: Edible Gardens Take Root in High Schools

At The Jolly Roger Corner, you get a glimpse into Drake's oldest high school newspaper The Jolly Roger. Check out more articles, photos, reviews and insight into our local school at drakejr.com. This article comes from the March 7 edition.

BY ANDREW VARGAS DELMAN

It’s nearly spring, and the gardens are blooming. However, Drake’s garden is a little-known group of planter boxes hidden behind the storage barn, while the other schools in our district have flourishing edible gardens.

All of the gardens in our neighboring schools provide learning opportunities, and some even provide produce for special events or the school food service program.

Jim Rice, social studies and Agroecology teacher at San Andreas high school, said, “I started the garden here over twenty-six years ago.” About fourteen students are in Rice’s Agroecology class, which maintains a small garden. In the class, students learn to build a seedling flat, how to create a proper soil mix, and how to sow seeds in the flats and the growing beds, as well as regular care like watering and feeding plants.

After all the work, students get to enjoy the garden’s well caredfor produce. “We have lettuce throughout the school year and tomato seedlings in the spring,” said Rice. “We’re harvesting; we’re cooking; we’re eating.”

The Agroecology program has also helped with other projects on campus: students cooperated with the school’s art teacher to beautify an outdoor seating area with new benches, a new table, and latticework, adorned with jasmine vines and passion flowers.

Because the garden program is a class, it receives a budget, which can be used to buy the necessary supplies. Rice has also managed to secure some grants to supplement the garden’s funding. He noted the continued support of the school’s principals in making the garden viable since its establishment.

At The Branson School, an organic garden was built in the center of the campus. “As the newly planted fruit trees and vegetables grow, we hope students will find the garden a welcome place to sit, admire, think, and pick a fresh tasty snack,” said Eric Oldmixon, visual arts teacher.

Branson’s garden has been “100% student driven,” according to Oldmixon. Apart from a few community work days with parents, all of the work on the garden has been done by the students in the Environmental Action Committee. These students use the garden to learn about organic and sustainable agriculture.

Some of the food from the garden is used to supplement the school’s food service. “We do not have the space to produce enough for the entire school,” said Oldmixon, “but we aim to supplement and to raise awareness about the ingredients when they are used in the lunch or event services.”

Similarly, Redwood’s ecology program, supervised by teacher Joe Stewart, grows annual plants like “flowers and veggies” in a student-maintained garden. This program is larger, with approximately 110 students involved.

Enough produce is available that students can “share it with their families, teachers, and other students,” said Stewart. The funding for the garden comes from the science department and the TUHSD maintenance department, but according to Stewart, the garden “does not require much upkeep beyond the regular student cultivation and care.”

At Tamalpais, the 64 students in the environmental science program plant a wide variety of crops in their garden. “We grow pumpkin, tomatoes, peppers, artichokes, lettuce, chard, kale, spinach, and broccoli, and we have a lemon tree, apple tree, and blueberry bushes,” said science teacher Lyanne Abreu. “The students use it to make authentic meals – two weeks ago they made stir fry with the chard, kale and spinach.”

Alice Waters is one of the most well-known advocates for gardens and improved lunches in schools. Following her success as chef and owner of Chez Panisse, a restaurant in Berkeley committed to serving meals made with local and seasonal ingredients, she established the Chez Panisse Foundation in 1996, based on the idea that children in public schools should have access to fresh, healthy food.

The Chez Panisse Foundation helped to transform an abandoned lot next to Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School into a flourishing organic garden replete with seasonal vegetables, herbs, berries, and fruit trees. A new kitchen-classroom was also built to teach students how to turn fresh ingredients into tasty and nutritious meals.

Though our own garden, located near the photography room by the creek, is not currently part of the curriculum, students work on it every other year as a unit. Sue Fox, SEA-DISC science teacher, said, “It used to be a senior project, but since we’ve blended [11th and 12th grades], it is every other year.”

Fox said that the students “raise their own food, design their own beds, and do the whole operation of it.” The fruits of the garden were donated to St. Vincent’s to feed the homeless, Fox said.

Anna Pieri, SEA-DISC senior and co-president of the garden club added that they, “also donate the produce to non-profits or food banks.”

Accompanying the upkeep of the garden is a SEA-DISC debate project. It entails extensive research on various forms of sustainable agriculture. In preparation for this publicized debate, students gain new perspectives on the pros and cons of particular methods. Senior Dom Longo, for instance, gained a respect for genetically modified organisms [GMOs] in farming, and said that he doesn’t think they should be denounced on the basis of imperfection, because it is a new technique.

Fox also made note of the work that the Global Student Embassy [GSE] is doing here, headed by a Drake graduate, Ian Creelman. Under his direction, our garden has received plants as donations, and hosted international students from Tanzania and Ecuador. Ian added, “It’s great to see [this issue] get the attention it deserves.”

Creelman and the Garden Club are working hard to maintain the garden for teaching about sustainable agriculture and providing organic produce for local non-profits.

Check out more from the Jolly Roger here.