School Garden 101 Webinar Series Recordings (Spring 2020)

Mass. Farm to School Network’s Education Working Group
Spring 2020 School Garden 101 Webinar Series

Part I – It Starts with a Seed – Selecting & Accessing Seeds for School Gardens

This webinar is all about seeds! If you’re planting a school garden, your goals can really inform your seed choices. What kind of garden are you growing? When do you want to plant? Do you want to grow fruits and veggies? How about herbs or flowers? Hope Guardenier (School Sprouts) will walk you through resources to help you plan your school garden, choose the varieties of seeds that will work best for your area and planting schedule, and discuss options for obtaining seeds, such as seed saving, donations, or ordering. [Watch a recording & download the slides.]

Part II – School Garden 101 Series: School Garden Lesson Planning & Classroom Management 

School gardens are powerful teaching tools, teeming with possibilities for hands-on and observational learning for students, but how can teachers fit garden time into their busy class schedules? Calin Duke (Sustainable Nantucket) walks us through how to plan a lesson in the garden, incorporating standards into garden lessons, and her approach to classroom management while teaching in the garden. [Watch a recording & download the slides.]

Part III – Springtime Planning & Preparing for Planting in School Gardens

Spring is the perfect time for school garden educators to think about (or revisit) your goals for your garden beds and how you want to use them. What you come up with can really inform your garden planning and planting. On this webinar, we take a “backwards planning” approach and discuss how your plans can shift to support your goals. For example, do you want to be taste testing in the garden? If so, what are the recipes you’ll want to use and what plants will you need to grow? What would the planting and harvesting schedule look like to reach your goal? Will your ingredients be ready to harvest when you think you’d need them? We’ll go into all this and much more! [Watch the recording & download the slides.]

Part IV – Best Practices for Food Safety in School Gardens

School gardens are a wonderful teaching tool for nutrition lessons. There’s nothing like sampling fruits, veggies, and herbs freshly grown in the garden, and it’s an unforgettable experience for students! Whether sampling fresh or cooked ingredients from the garden, it’s important to think about best practices for food safety and allergen awareness. On this webinar we hear from Dawn Lovejoy about policies and practices to consider for ensuring that every child is safe to sample from school gardens. [Watch the recording & download the slides.]

Part V – Planning for Summer Care for School Garden Beds

How can schools maintain and care for their gardens over the summertime when school is out? This webinar will discuss garden management practices, potential partnerships, and uses for the garden outside of school programs. [Watch the recording & download the slides.]