The Edible Schoolyard at Berkeley, Calif.’s Martin Luther King Middle School (above: "Alice's Olive" tree at an entrance to the garden) is a totem for people who believe in humanity’s unbreakable place in nature’s realm, but it is, today, one of thousands of gardens tied to schools in the United States.
It is distinguished by its private funding source, but in Berkeley, it is one of a dozen school gardens, and in California, one of about 4,000. I learned learned some of this while touring the garden last week with director Kyle Cornforth, who said that every week, about 300 students each are instructed on two tracks — outdoor work in the garden, as part of the science curriculum, and indoors in the kitchen, as part of their humanities studies.
Cornforth said the effort, which has a staff of 8, costs about a half-million dollars a year, “essentially a gift” to Berkeley schools, which got me to wondering, what would they do if it disappeared?
Turns out, we might be on the verge of finding out. No, Alice Waters’s creation isn’t going anywhere, but some of the federal money that makes possible Berkeley’s other school gardens is endangered. The money is available only to schools in which more than half of students qualify for reduced or free lunch support from the USDA, and several schools are rising above that line. (Right: Dinosaur kale)
Since assistance for school lunch is set by income level, it ought to be good news that a lower percentage of families qualifies for it. Except that one explanation for “rising” income levels is that families that formerly bore the expense of private school no longer can, and those families are raising the population’s average income. Not the only explanation, but in an economy no one calls thriving, it’s a believable one.
Mark Coplan, public information director for the Berkeley Unified School District, is unequivocal that the gardens are important to learning in Berkeley: “We have the belief that nutrition really impacts the whole student, and that school gardens are one way to integrate everything from what they eat at lunch to what they eat at home.
“If kids plant it, grow it, pick it, they eat it. We have very clear indications in the past decade that that is, in fact, the truth.”
But even so, they might go away; Coplan said three schools, at $190,000 per school, is threatened, and the district is lobbying to save them.
If not the model for school gardens —— the Edible Schoolyard is certainly an exemplar. It has been bringing forth fruits from the earth, and a way of learning for thousands of students, for 16 years, since restaurateur and leading-light locavore Alice Waters of Chez Panisse established the half-acre-or-so garden/outdoor classroom in concert with the school district.
Outdoors, students learn to compost, propagate, and harvest about 50 fruit trees, herbs and flowers, and produce while tending two ducks and a brood of chickens, Cornforth said. She said future initiatives may include more fruit trees and some terrace gardening, which could feed the ancient civilizations curriculum because of all the nation’s that have scratched out their plantings on unlevel ground. The garden also has a pond and water catchment system that are supposed to be fueled by solar, but the panels have been subject to theft.
Theft of a different type, deer predation, has eaten into the garden’s produce yield, which Cornforth estimated at between 1,000 and 1,500 pounds a year, allowing students to experience the value of growing under protective netting (right). What is harvested is used in the kitchen curriculum, although the program has to supplement the yield with purchases. Instruction includes recipes, terminology, and use of kitchen tools.
For most people, produce is a garden’s bottom line, though as a third-year cooperative community gardener, I also cite benefits not only of learning but of community and community ownership. Cornforth said in a school setting, the benefits also multiply.
“Food is the hook, but they’re being asked to do real things with real tools, and they appreciate it.” The students, aged 11-14, “aren’t really kids anymore. Being treated as adults is invaluable to them and they step up to the challenge.”
She added, “I see so many kids become engaged and happy and turned on by the experience of cooking in a group. They begin to get clear ideas of what the world should look like. Not all students learn by sitting in a classroom. Group work and collaboration are robust learning tools. But they also need the skills.”
Because the Edible Schoolyard is foundation-funded, Coplan says “the one thing that comes up in conversation is that King is not one we have to worry about.”
Boots (left) and signs, queued up for duty.
