To bring the garden into the tightly scheduled school day, garden-based curriculum has been developed for most academic subjects, especially in elementary school. The most obvious connections are to science and nutrition, but gardens are also often used for teaching English, math, art and social science. In secondary school, a garden can be a laboratory for teaching environmental science, horticulture and culinary arts. A history of the purposes behind school gardening can be found in City Bountiful: A History of Community Gardening in America, by Laura J. Lawson.
"When middle school students in large urban communities are given the opportunity to learn about ecology in a real-world context, they are more enthusiastic about attending school, make better grades, eat healthier food due to wiser food choices, and become more knowledgeable about natural processes." J. Michael Murphy, an associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School