Healdsburg Elementary School: Healdsburg

This program offers hands-on garden and nutrition education for all students, pre-kindergarten through second grade. Twelve raised beds, fruit trees, compost bins, worm boxes, a greenhouse, a chicken pen, herb and fairy gardens, and a willow hut complete this garden. In addition to a garden education coordinator, the school hired a nutrition and kitchen garden teacher (a registered dietician with a master's degree in Public Health Nutrition and Maternal & Child Health Care). Nutrition and science lessons from University of California’s TWIGS curriculum are tied into food preparation and cooking activities.

Funds from this SGN Cooking From the Garden grant (2009-2010) supplement garden food through local farmers such as Carrot Top Farm and Love Farms, and are used to purchase additional cooking supplies. Each month one aspect of the garden is highlighted in the curriculum and cooking coincides with garden themes. During seed gathering time students make trail mix or roast pumpkin seeds; while studying root vegetables they prepare dishes using carrots or beets. With help from other gardens, they produce enough assorted vegetables to fire up a soup pot regularly. Every kindergarten class makes sorbets and lemonade with strawberries, salsa and soup with tomatoes or butternut squash. “When children are introduced to fresh, locally grown foods, which they prepare from Garden-to-Table, they benefit -- from planting that first seed to sharing the food together.”