With fall approaching faster than a speeding squirrel, Clay 1st graders explored the trees, vegetables, flowers, and grasses at Clay Elementary that are going to seed in our garden this week. The class remembered many facts about seeds from garden class last year. One student raised her hand and said solemnly, “You only get […]

This past weekend Iron Street Farm in Southside Chicago hosted Growing Food in Justice’s (GFIJ) annual conference aimed at dismantling racism and empowering low-income and communities of color through sustainable and local agriculture. I was able to attend this years gathering and bring back to the Gateway Greening team new strategies to engage our communities […]

One beautiful fall afternoon last week at Gateway Greening we had our day packed with indoor meetings. It was so refreshing when I started getting these exciting pictures and texts from one of the teachers from Mallinckrodt. Ms. Mayes was sending in the work of her 3rd grade students in the garden. It was great […]

A few weeks ago Classroom teacher Ms. Mayes and I gave her 3rd grade class an option to either write a piece for publication in our e-news or do some garden chores. The students who chose to write a piece were given a specific subject – Why Should Schools Have Gardens? It was rewarding for us […]

  Did you know that school gardens are a huge part of the Farm to School movement? We didn’t realize just how huge until we attended this month’s Farm to School Conference in Columbia (which featured one of Gateway Greening’s member gardens, the Falcon Garden at Halls Ferry Elementary! Go Falcons!). Over and over again, […]

This year, I’ve visited the community garden at Crown Center for Senior Living and worked with the Happy Planters, the garden club there. One of the projects we undertook was using the greenhouse they have there to grow sweet potato slips not only for their garden but for the Youth Garden Sweet Potato Challenge. The […]

We celebrated Thanksgiving a little early at Clay with a meal we grew in our garden– kale chips and roasted sweet potatoes!   Cooking at school can be a challenge. Last year, we brought a portable fire pit to the school and roasted potatoes and onions in a real fire outside by the garden. This […]

According to LaManda Joy the author of Start A CommunityFood Garden, Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) is an approach that helps communities and groups focus on what they do have instead of what they don’t. The ABCD approach is very powerful because instead of creating anxiety about what a community may be lacking it encourages group to celebrate […]

What’s driving you crazy in your school garden? For this 1st grader, it’s a giant weed that refuses to be pulled out.     There’s a difference between the ongoing tasks of a school garden– mulching, watering, everyday weeding– that cause us stress, and the individual stressors that I like to call ‘tolerations’.   A […]