Come look at our new school SFG gardens :)

I helped the Montessori charter school where I work and where two of my children go to school install some new SFG's. They had one already for the older grades but not the rest of the school. I was able to get the funds from our PTO and parent volunteers and students put them together. These pictures are from a few weeks ago with my daughter posing, LOL! I will have to get some new pictures now that the sunflowers have bloomed and gotten even taller.



The gardens are where the children can work on them during recess and still have adult /supervision. The first double bed has zinnia/marigold/geranium alongside romas/peppers/geranium. The second bed has sunflower, basil, carrots, beets, onion, marigold and alyssum. The final bed is a box of potato that the youngest 3-4-and 5 year olds planted. The classrooms will be cooking with all of it (spaghetti sauce, salsa etc...) and will use the flowers in the classrooms. The existing wood SFG was planted with 3 sisters.



The only thing we need to do differently next year is our gridding. We tried using string and it didn't work. Animals of either the 2 or 4 foot variety as well as our feathered friends couldn't seem to leave it alone.























The overgrown mess to the right of the wood SFG with the 3 sisters is where our existing compost pile had been. This year we will be redesigning our composting.

That is AWESOME!!!! They are beautiful...

I hope others will follow your lead and get more of the schools involved...

Beautiful beds and your daughter looks proud as punch! EVEN BETTER!

Wow, what a great way to get young SFGer's ready to grow their own food.

Who is responsible for watering during summer vacation? It looks great, and I love the flowers....less maintanence. Great job!

How wonderful that you can try SFG at the school so youngsters can learn how to grow things. They'll have the correct mindset when they are old enough to start their own SFG at home. Good job.

Very nice! I am in charge of our garden at school. Had I known about SFG's before, I would have pushed for that instead. Although we are learning and growing plenty while having fun, SFG's add another mathematical twist to planting. I am envious!

Definitely a garden to be proud of! What a wonderful way to integrate practical life work.

My children attended a Montessori school through K and grade 3. My son really took gardening and an appreciation for the outdoors during his years in Children's House. It helped that one of the assistants had a green thumb and their classroom had the largest outdoor courtyard.

very nice!

Great diversity in your SF garden! I heard young sunflower buds will follow the sun but older ones don't. One suggetion is that we always add TickleMe Plants to our garden to further excite our kids about gardening and nature. TickleMe Plants are the only plant that will close their leaves and lower their branches when the kids tickle them. Our students run to the garden or (classroom when we bring them inside for the winter) to greet their Pet TickleMe Plants:lol: . It's one plant that every school garden benefits from as kids become even more sensitive to plants as living things.

You can find educational information by searching TickleMe Plant

wondering how the school garden is going.....did the kids get to harvest anything yet?.....the kids at our school love to help in the fall and spring time and they get to nibble from the garden during outside play time its pretty cool!

hugs

rose

The gardens were a BOOMING success!!!! Volunteers water over the summer months. The kids love to go out in the garden during recess to water, pick plants, and look for insects. So far this fall classrooms have made multiple batches of salsa, vegetable soup, baked beets, and oven roasted potato just to name a few things. We also have a freezer full of frozen tomato and basil for winter cooking. We also had to pick bags of green tomato because of a frost, and classrooms are doing various experiments to see how green tomat ripen fastest inside.

The flowers play a big part in the Montessori environment. The sunflower heads were harvested and used for fine motor skills in the Children's House (pre-k & kind) by having them pull the seeds out with tweezers. The zinnias decorated the classroom and were used in practical life for flower cutting work by the younger children. This week we took a walk to see the stages of seed development in the sunflowers---sounds simple but the 1st/2nd/3rd graders were enthralled!

Congratulations. I reckon you have sown the seeds for the future generation who will always remember that happy time.

I know myself that my early years with my Dad laid the foundation of what I am doing today, even though there were years and years when I never did any gardening other than produce a few flowers.

That's beautiful! At my son's elementary school we are really having trouble getting started planting this year--fireants, drought, mandatory testing, etc.--and your pictures are inspiration to keep trying. Thanks for posting!