September 2007
Children's health problems inspire school garden programs
Participants at children's garden classes.
The epidemic of childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes has resulted in interest and support for using school gardens to teach healthy eating, according to University of California researchers who have received a $100,000 California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) grant to continue their work.
"So many communities are asking for help with nutrition and gardens that our program alone cannot meet the demand," said Carol Hillhouse, UC Davis' Children's Garden Program director, and the principal investigator of the grant.
The CDFA grant will allow the program to train other trainers to provide school gardening workshops in their own communities, as well as develop online training tools and expand school garden resources for middle schools, which are an expanding target audience. The first trainers' workshop took place at UC Davis in June.
"The original workshop and subsequent trainers' workshops planned for late fall will generate local Creating and Sustaining Your School Garden workshops all over the state," Hillhouse said.
The Children's Garden Program general garden workshop series is offered at UC Davis for $20 each in September and October including:
Garden Smarts: Using Gardens to Teach State Standards – Saturday, Sept. 15
Gardens for Good Nutrition – Saturday, Oct. 6
Composting at School – Saturday, Oct. 6
Creating and Sustaining Your School Garden – Saturday, Oct. 27.
A fully-booked trainers' workshop is scheduled Sept. 7 at the Hansen Agricultural Center, which is affiliated with UC Cooperative Extension in Ventura County. For more information about UC Davis Children's Garden Program workshops, please contact Katie Hume at the Children's Garden Program at or (530) 752-7655 or see the Children's Garden Program Web site at http://childrensgarden.ucdavis.edu/SchoolGardens.htm. For information on statewide workshop locations, check the California School Garden Network at csgn.org.
Trainers' workshop participants learn strategies for teaching garden basics such as soil preparation and planting, how to choose plants, planting times, and how to keep plants growing. They also receive resources for planning and designing school gardens.
"It's so important to support those who are teaching our children about where their food comes from, and how they can grow their own," said Tom Tomich, director of the UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI) and the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. "To ensure a sustainable agriculture for all of us, we need informed and healthy consumers, and what better place to start that than in school gardens?"
In addition to Hillhouse, other garden workshop presenters include John Fisher of the UC Santa Cruz Life Lab Science Program, which is involved in the development of the trainer workshops, and Hume and Jeri Ohmart of the UC Davis Children's Garden Program.
Workshop sponsors include the ASI's California Food and Fiber Futures project, which is funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the California Association of Nurseries and Garden Centers. Additional support is from the California School Garden Network, the California Department of Education, and the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
The newest Specialty Crop Block Grant from the CDFA was awarded to the UC Davis Children's Garden Program and their collaborators for the project “Supporting California Instructional School Gardens to Increase Awareness, Knowledge and Consumption of Specialty Crops."
UC Cooperative Extension, the California Department of Education, the California School Garden Network, Life Lab Science Program and the Center for Integrative Nutrition Environments in School Communities are among the collaborators.
Media contacts:
Lyra Halprin, (530) 752-8664,
