Getting Started

If you are planning to start a school garden or have recently been given responsibility for your school garden, then this is where you need to start. It will be important that you think about some initial planning steps and who you want on board to support the school garden. The information here will also help you look at different ways to financially sustain the school garden as well as think about the importance of food safety.

Committees

Ask anyone involved with a successful school garden program and they will tell you many helping hands will make your school garden project easier to implement, maintain, and keep it sustainable for future school kids to enjoy for many years.  So, before you can put the shovel to the ground, it's important to find other like-minded individuals in your school community interested in helping. This includes parents, teachers, administration, and school maintenance.

From this larger group you can start to create your school garden committee to help organize, tackle, and share the load of starting and maintaining your school garden. Most committees are between 6-12 members, depending on garden project size and goals, and ideally should be diverse, to help give your committee the resources and flexibility to create your school garden.

• Creating and Using a School Garden as an Outdoor Classroom Handout
• Garden Committee Responsibilities from Common Threads Farm
• Forming a Garden Committee from Kids Gardening

Goals and Objectives

One of the activities of a school garden committee is to develop a set of measurable goals and objectives.  You may want to accomplish many things but start with four or five basic goals that can be accomplished in the first year and one or two goals that could be accomplished in the second year. Remember, a goal is something that you want to achieve while an objective defines a strategy or an action that you will take to move you closer toward achieving the goal.

• Garden Goals 
• Garden Goals from Kids Gardening
• Garden Goals from Food and Agriculture Organization

Timelines and Action Plans

Creating a timeline for starting, maintaining, or upgrading a school garden can contribute toward success with your project. Often these projects take longer than expected or end up costing more than planned. Read More

Annual Review

The purpose of the annual review is to make an overall assessment of the school garden.  This should be led by the school’s garden coordinator.  If the coordinator kept a journal and monitored the action plan the review can be an easy process.  Once the review is complete a short report should be presented to the principal.  You can also share the highlights from the report with your PTO, school newsletter or other supporting organizations to help keep interest and support to the school garden. Some specific items to  look at include:

• Were the goals set for the year achieved? If not, can a quick assessment be done to determine why? All goals should be evaluated and goals that were achieved should be removed from the action plan and any new goals with measurable objectives added.
• How much was the garden used for dedicated class time?
• How did teachers use the garden outside of dedicated class time?
• What are some suggested garden element improvement suggestions?
• Have there been any requests for activities or exercise related to the garden?
• What have the students said about the garden and their experience?

Seed Libraries

Seed libraries are also an excellent community resource that schools can use to get free or low cost seeds. 

• University of Arizona Seed Library
• Pima County Library Seed Library
• Native Seed/SEARCH