School as a Garden

For the last 4 months I have been working with the school across the street, writing grant proposals, painting planter beds, planning, meeting, promoting, researching, weeding and watering to make school gardens all over the school grounds a reality. This holiday time found me drawing plans for garden kitchens. Today I found this video from Australia heartening.


In a related vein, I read this weekend that Britain's Jamie Oliver has won the 2010 TED prize. Jamie's work with England's school lunch program riveted me some years back. I have never forgotten it and I readily admit this was my inspiration for working on this School as a Garden project in my community. I wish I could watch the whole School Dinners series again.

“Every child should be taught to cook in school, not just talk about nutrition all day. Good food can be made in 15 minutes. This could be the first generation where the kids teach the parents.” – Jamie Oliver

As the TED write up states about Jamie Oliver's projects:

Campaigns such as School Dinners, Ministry of Food and Food Revolution USA combine Oliver’s culinary tools, cookbooks and television with more standard activism and community organizing to create change on both the individual and governmental level.

Oh yeah . . . YouTube