Gardens
School gardens continue to flourish and here at School Food Service we believe that tending the garden, grows great kids. In the 2016-2017 school year, 123 of our 202 schools district-wide, including charter sites serviced by School Food Service, reported having a garden on their school campus. The breakdown of these gardens is as follows:
| School Type | # with Gardens |
| Elementary | 82 |
| Middle | 19 |
| High | 11 |
| K-8 | 1 |
| K-12 | 2 |
| Charter | 8 |
| Garden Type | Amount |
| Vegetable | 106 |
| Herb | 57 |
| Fruit | 34 |
| Butterfly | 76 |
American Heart Association Grants:
Eight of our district schools are currently funded by a three year Teaching Gardens grant through the American Heart Association. To qualify, each school must complete a comprehensive survey ensuring their commitment to the program. Once a school is selected, they must establish a teaching gardens committee. Each of these schools are in different phases of the grant. Since no new grants were awarded in FY17, the American Heart Association offered to extend the grant an additional year. Five of the six District schools chose to extend their garden program an additional year.
School Completing Second Year:
JC Mitchell Elementary
Schools Completing Third Year:
Banyan Creek Elementary
Lincoln Elementary
Schools Extended for a Fourth and Final Year:
Benoist Farms Elementary
Elbridge Gale Elementary
Glade View Elementary
Grassy Waters Elementary
KEC / Canal Point Elementary
New Garden Collaboration Team
To enhance and further support school gardens in our District, a Garden Collaboration Team was established. The intention behind the Garden Collaboration Team was to create an alliance between all the District Departments that are impacted by School Gardens and work together to develop an infrastructure that created consisted practices district-wide while allowing for autonomy at each school site. As a collaborative team, we worked on creating procedures to allow us to capture an accurate count of school gardens each year, to provide the guidance necessary to ensure successful outcomes, create resources to disseminate to schools to launch in FY18. The District Departments involved were:
Building Code Services (BCS)
Environmental & Conservations Services (ECS)
Grants and Resource Development
Maintenance & Plant Operations (MP&O)
Risk Management / Safety
Safe Schools / Health Services
School Food Service (SFS)
