School Gardens

School gardens are cool and I had considered organizing one when my kids were in elementary. Ya know, as much as parents thought it was a great idea no one really wanted to go up in the summer and water the dang thing, pick the produce, nothing. I guess they figured it gets put away just like the other school supplies.

So unless you have a few families lined up that are close to the school it probably won't work.

I imagine the first step would be to visit the school and make sure they have an adequate space with running water nearby. If it looks doable then send an email to the principal AND the facilities/property manager of the school district with your idea.
You should also be prepared to volunteer as "environmental" or "outdoor" parent educator and get a team of parent volunteers in place. Our teachers were very supportive of the garden we had at our school but without the parents planning and running it, it never would have happened. Teachers are already struggle to get mandated programs/lessons in place, they had absolutely no time to manage any extracurricular activities.

Lots of good tips below.

But the one big main thing is: WHO... is going to maintain it? And what grades will be maintaining it and when?
Will it take up class time, for example? Or will it take up recess time?
Or when exactly will people have time to tend to it and maintain it?
And when school is not in session, like during summer or breaks or on long weekends?
And once a parent's kid is no longer at elementary, then that parent or parents, may not want to continue "helping" with it.
Teachers don't have time either.
Nor even the Janitors etc.

If you want to do a garden at your son's school, ask the Principal first if that is possible. THEN, research it and write up a proposal and full details of it etc. And see if, there are Dept. of Education rules or any laws of what gardens like this must be like, and per construction of it etc.

Then, does the school have a place where a garden can be? And a water hose to water there? And any storage space for garden things/equipment etc.

Also, how will it be decided what is grown there?
And per things that are grown there, who will harvest it and who will take it home if that is a possibility.
And who will take care of it, during winters and weeding it etc.

No matter what you need to get school approval first and see what the Principal says.
And you, may be the one who will organize it all and maintain it. All the time.

The elementary school that my youngest is at installed a garden 2 years ago and it's the highlight of the school.

One of the issues was making the garden ADA compliant, which meant building in raised beds and providing enough room between the beds for wheelchairs to maneuver. It actually makes the gardens easier for everyone to enjoy and gives lots of space for the kids to gather 'round and participate.

The garden has 2 raised beds that are 4 ft x 8 ft, a "three sisters" ground-level patch of corn, beans and squash, a 12-foot diameter geodesic dome built from tree branches that supports vines and hanging gourds, a sunflower patch and a pre-school wild flower garden. There are also 24 stools that are made of slices of a giant log so there is an outdoor learning space.

The beds themselves took about $900 in materials to build and the PTA paid for those. A local garden center helped donate and deliver fill for the beds. A bunch of parents (including dads) actually bought the lumber and built the beds and several families spent a weekend installing them. The students helped plant seeds into the beds (some classrooms started seedlings indoors) and a group of families signed up to water and weed over the summer and harvest what they wanted. It's a neighborhood school so there were plenty of volunteers for that. At the end of the summer, the school's back-to-school family picnic included foods made from the garden's vegetables.

Last year, they rotated the crops a bit, added the dome (which was an Eagle scout project for a boy in town), turned one of the beds into a fairy garden (huge hit with the kids), and added a pretty picket fence that families came out and painted on a Saturday.

If you're on Facebook, search for FARM - Fundamentals of Agricultural Resource Management - it's a page started by one of the parents who helped build the outdoor classroom and has lots of pictures, ideas and links. There are also grants available for installing school gardens - if you do a search you may find more info on that.

These websites are also great:
https://edibleschoolyard.org/
http://www.growtolearn.org/
http://www.kidsgardening.org/school-gardening

As you can see, I'm a huge, raving fan of school gardens. I hope you run with your idea and get the support that you need from the school administration, faculty, staff, and families.

Good websites mentioned below. I'd also see if other schools in the region have already done this. It makes it much easier to "sell" it to your school if there are other principals and maintenance crews for them to talk to.

There will be compliance issues, materials expenses, and tons of labor involved! Everyone loves to plant, no one likes to weed. Most of the yield will be in the summer when school is out, so there has to be a plan in place to deal with that. If you grow more cool weather crops (lettuce, spinach, radishes for spring; pumpkins and gourds for fall) you get a lot of action while the kids are in school, but the eating isn't as fun! And pumpkins take up a ton of space for relatively small yields.

There's also a curriculum piece that gets involved - and it can be very positive with teachers incorporating math into the expenses and seed/plant purchases, graphing the layout, studying weather, figuring natural ways to prevent pests and animals from eating everything, and so on. Sometimes there are ways to "grow" ladybugs and praying mantises for natural pest control. The cafeteria often adjusts school lunch selections to reflect produce grown in the garden. Occasionally a local farmer will help with equipment and advice, and hardware/building supply stores will help with materials at cost. A woman I know works with local farmers and "gleaning" to increase yield, provide natural mulch, and so on for the school garden.

But this is a huge undertaking so you need a strong parent group, good leaders and committed summer crews to make it happen. That doesn't mean to stop! This is a great initiative, has been done in many schools in the past 5 years (Michelle Obama really kickstarted it) and it's probably part of the reason childhood obesity rates actually started to drop in the past year.

Binghampton has a short growing season. your county extension would be able to help identify what to plant and when. Also, you might have to do soil testing for contaminants including lead, pcbs, etc before you can grow food crops.

I would consider some fast growing flowers, like morning glory, sunflowers, or planting a butterfly garden, or hummingbird garden instead with hardy perennials which are deer resistant (if that's a problem).

The kids can get their hands dirty, do all the science, math, weeding, mulching and composting and not have any of the headaches of growing, harvesting, safety testing and making use of a food crop.

Best,
F. B.