Growing Bodies; Growing Minds: School Gardens Are about More Than Just Nutrition for New Jersey’s Students

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
GROWING BODIES;
GROWING MINDS
School gardens are about more than just nutrition for New Jersey’s students.
BY JESSICA KITCHIN
Even on a cool winter morning, amid concrete buildings and
an overcast sky, the rooftop garden at St. Philip’s Academy in
Newark feels full of life. Birds flutter in, visiting the apple and
plum trees. Colorful signs designate each grade’s garden plot, includ-ing
the pizza garden, the pumpkin patch and the fruit bowl. There
are even a few verdant bursts—the parsley, the collards—thanks to a
mild winter season.
“The whole garden is accessible to all the children at the school,
so they can explore, taste and touch,” says Frank Mentesana, direc-tor
of the school’s EcoSPACES program. “We use the garden envi-ronment
to get the classroom away from traditional desks, to
approach learning in a hands-on way.”
Gardens—whether on a rooftop, carved into school grounds or
in simple raised beds in a parking lot—have been springing up at
school sites all around New Jersey. They are one component of the
Farm to School movement that has taken hold statewide, aiming to
improve school lunches, promote locally grown produce and edu-cate
through gardening.
“It’s hard for schools to look at lunch as part of a curriculum, because
they’re looking at food in a dollars-and-sense way rather than looking at
the entire picture of a composite child,” says Beth Feehan, director of
the New Jersey Farm to School Network, which formed in 2008 with
the idea that schools around the state needed a central resource to help
improve school nutrition. “That’s where the disconnect is.”
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 12.5
million children and adolescents ages 2 to 19 are obese, which is 17
percent of the population—a statistic that has tripled since 1980.
Consequences of childhood obesity can include high blood pressure,
diabetes, asthma, joint problems and depression. And at many
schools, the lunchroom isn’t helping: A University ofMichigan study
found that students who bought lunch at school had higher choles-terol,
consumed twice as many fatty meats and sugary drinks, and
were nearly six times less likely to eat vegetables or fruit than those
who brought lunch from home.
36 spring 2012 ediblejersey

Above, from left to right: Plans are underway this spring to expand the 20' x 40' garden at Alder Avenue Middle School in Egg Harbor Township;
the garden at St. Philip’s Academy in Newark is located on the school’s rooftop; early spring beds at Littleton Elementary in Princeton; produce
grown and harvested by students at Hopewell Elementary School is often served at lunchtime.
ediblejersey spring 2012 37
“It’s really pretty frightening,” says Margaret Noon, president of
Slow Food Northern New Jersey, a group that promotes school gar-dens
and supports food-justice programs. “One of the biggest food-justice
issues is school lunch, and the underserved are totally relying
on that food.”
Although a major part of the Farm to School mission involves
renegotiating food-service contracts with schools, the movement’s
proponents believe that one way to better connect students to
healthy, unprocessed food is through on-campus gardens. “I’ve come
to believe more and more that it’s the central way to get children to
eat better foods,” says Feehan. “It’s the main reason they will eat
green things.”
New Jersey has an assortment of organizations that help schools
literally get the seeds planted. The Farm to School Network provides
resources for starting school gardens, including grant opportunities,
how-to checklists and seasonality charts. Slow Food has given out
more than a dozen grants and provided guidance to jump-start
school gardens, mainly in lower-income communities. City Green
provides grants, direction and curricula for school gardens, particu-larly
in urban areas such as Paterson and Jersey City. And AtlantiCare
Health Engagement, based in Hammonton, has initiated 19 school
gardens in its service area.
“Gardens create opportunities for physical activity and enable
individuals to eat healthfully,” says Samantha Kiley, director of health
promotion at AtlantiCare. “They have a greater ability to influence
healthy behaviors, more than any lecture we could offer.”
Although each school has a different set of circumstances—from
financial resources to physical space to parental involvement—“the
teacher is the critical factor,” says Noon. Even the most passionate
parents may stop volunteering when their children graduate from a
school, and administrators may not have the time, but a teacher can
work closely with students to integrate a garden into the school day.
Of course, teachers can’t make it happen alone. “There’s a win-ning
team that has to be in place for the long-term survival and thriv-ing
of the school garden,” says Dorothy Mullen, cofounder of the
Princeton School Gardens Cooperative. Combine the necessary sup-port
inside the school with a community that buys into the idea, she
says, and success follows. “Gardens are always optional, so each one
is driven by passionate volunteers.”
Mullen knows what she’s talking about. Some of the best exam-ples
of how a school garden can thrive are in Princeton, where gar-dens
have been established at all of the district’s schools and garden-ing
is thoroughly integrated into the school day.
At Riverside Elementary, Mullen has built up the school garden
by developing a curriculum based on it, bringing in master garden-ers
as instructors, and preparing meals using garden produce. For
example, she offered “Three Sisters soup,” a soup made with beans,
corn and squash, to fourth graders while they were studying the
Lenape Indians. “Figuring out how to make food part of the existing
standards gives children two more senses, smell and taste, to reinforce
those lessons,” says Mullen.
Amy Mayer of the Princeton School Gardens Cooperative calls
Riverside’s program “our flagship garden,” and points out that each
of the district’s elementary schools has its own unique features. At
Littlebrook, where Mayer is co-coordinator of the garden, the PTO
funds a garden educator, every student has garden lessons, and each
grade has a horticultural project that links to their classroom curricu-lum
from year to year. At Johnson Park, parents volunteer at the
school garden twice a week so students can visit the garden during
recess. And at Community Park, lab-science teacher John Emmons
has expanded the edible garden and created several themed spaces,
such as a colonial herb garden and a prairie habitat area. There, he
Photographs:Alder Avenue Middle School photos courtesy of AtlantiCare; all other photos courtesy of the respective schools.

says, the lessons go further than science or history. “Being a part of
creating and maintaining something beautiful, living, and special
also builds community and civic pride,” he says. “Is there a better a
way to teach character education?”
Mayer says the schools work toward having as many students as pos-sible
have a sustained experience in the garden. “A lot of people put the
effort into making that happen. These are really community ventures.”
Down the road at the Waldorf School of Princeton, an acre-sized
garden has been an integral part of the school for decades. “The gar-den
is really a focal point of the campus,” says communications asso-ciate
Jamie Quirk. “It’s not in any way an ‘extra’ or a side program;
it’s at the core of what we do.”
Waldorf ’s garden includes a collection of spaces, from vegetable
garden beds to compost piles to a rain garden. Gardening teacher
Suzanne Ives Cunningham says it’s been rewarding to see the stu-dents
work in the soil and watch them discover new ways to interact
with the plants. Second graders, for example, plant broomcorn seeds
in the spring and, as third graders, harvest the plants and use them
to make brooms with a local artisan. Seventh graders studying the
age of exploration learn about native foods and invasive species.
“It’s not just about healthy eating and taking care of the land,
although that’s important,” Cunningham says. “These kids can be
studying ancient history and realize how much work it took to culti-vate
food and manage water. They’re seeing the practical side of
things and making a connection.”
Students are also learning that the word “garden” is about more
than just pretty flowers. “There’s the potential for the term to be
something passive,” says Quirk. “But the children in our garden real-ly
work. And it’s not just a place to grow vegetables, it’s a place where
they can really take apart and examine the science of life.”
Gardens are also places where children can learn that produce isn’t
“dirty.” “It’s so important for kids to learn that soil is alive,” says
Noon. “Soil isn’t dirt, it’s a good, healthy, living thing, and your food
comes from it. That’s an important lesson.”
In 2007, a group of Hopewell residents started Real Food for
Thought with the goal of establishing school gardens and improving
nutrition in Hopewell’s public schools. The result has been the intro-duction
of gardens to students district-wide, and the opportunity for
students to graze on fresh vegetables. “It’s a fun place for the chil-dren,”
says garden co-coordinator Tish Streeten, who says she sees
the excitement in children when, for example, there’s a harvest of car-rots
to pass around. “They’re really making the connection.”
The district has already become a shining example, as has the state.
On Farm to School Day in October, Hopewell Elementary hosted
Rep. Rush Holt, who sponsored national legislation designating
October as National Farm to School Month. “The garden really is a
classroom,” Holt said that day. “Schoolchildren in America are going
back to knowing where their food comes from. We were forgetting
New Jersey is the Garden State, and now we’re leading by example.”
Jim Harmon, director of special nutrition programs for the USDA
Mid-Atlantic region, says New Jersey is ahead of the curve with school
gardens. “I’d say we’re one of the up-front states. Schools here are really
finding a way of incorporating agriculture into the curriculum.”
But not all schools have the resources, or even any obvious place
to put a school garden. That’s where groups like Slow Food and City
Green come into play, giving grants, providing advice, and gathering
the tools and equipment necessary to get started.
“People just keep calling us and we keep saying yes, because you
want to capture the momentum while it’s there,” says Jennifer Papa,
founder of City Green. The group started creating community gar-dens
in cities and has since branched out to help dozens of schools
create green spaces, some of them in areas plagued by urban blight.
In Paterson, one such garden was created in a small space behind a
school, alongside a retaining wall that supported heavily trafficked
freight-train tracks.
“We see potential in these spaces,” says Amy Jolin, the group’s
education director. “Sometimes it takes some work to convince peo-ple,
but we work with what we have.”
Most of the year, City Green coordinates with interested schools
and helps create lesson plans centered on the garden. In the spring
and fall, the boots hit the ground and the lumber, soil, plants, trees
and benches are hauled in. “It’s challenging work, but over and over
again we get invited back and the garden is thriving and the kids are
so happy,” Papa says. “We have those inspirational moments where
we think, ‘Wow, this is working!’”
Back at St. Philip’s, the rooftop garden wasn’t something that was
adapted into a space; it was planned into the layout when the school
moved into a renovated factory in 2007. “This was very intentional,”
says Mentesana, adding that the space isn’t used exclusively for hor-ticulture
work—students and teachers do yoga, read and hold art
classes there.
Learning about sustainability and savoring nutritious food is
something that St. Philip’s tries to integrate throughout the day.
Students eat salad greens grown in the science lab topped with
items from the garden at lunchtime, where they sit family style at
a table with a mixture of students from different grade levels. They
go to the school’s test kitchen and pickle vegetables gathered from
WHAT’S ONTHE FARM-TO-SCHOOL
MENU IN NEW JERSEY?
By the numbers
80% of schools indicate that they are either
participating in or have an interest in participating
in the Farm to School movement.
73% of schools are purchasing Jersey-grown food.
11% of schools purchased Jersey-grown food directly
from a farmer.
Top types of Jersey-grown produce served in school cafete-rias
during the 2009–2010 school year were apples and
tomatoes, with more than half the total amount served com-ing
from in state. Other Jersey produce offered in schools
were peppers, cantaloupe, watermelon, blueberries, salad
greens, carrots, broccoli, peaches and nectarines.
Statistics from the 2012 Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural
Experiment Station Farm to School Survey Report

HOW DOESYOUR GARDEN GROW? A snapshot of school gardens around the state
Catawba Project at Alder Avenue Middle School
Location: Egg Harbor Township
Size: Currently 20 feet by 40 feet, but expanding to 40 feet by 40 feet
What is Grown: Tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, and a Three Sisters garden
Leadership: John Jones (teacher and Catawba adviser) and Natalie
McCullen (health teacher) work with AtlantiCare on the grant, and
parents volunteer with children during the summer.
Funding Partner: AtlantiCare
Involvement in School Curriculum: Garden project incorporated into the
science curriculum (variety of living things, plants science, body systems).
Connected to math curriculum through organizing planting rows and and
through calculating price per pound when harvesting tomatoes.The stu-dents
use mapping skills to plan the garden.The school created a website
(thecatawbaproject.org) this year with the help of a former student, and
the students write articles about events and updates.
Involvement in School Cafeteria/Lunches: School has been working
with the director of food services to find ways to get the food from
the garden into the cafeteria. Last year, the kitchen staff used all the
tomatoes picked over the summer to make tomato sauce, which was
used on the pizza during the school year.
Community Park Elementary School
Location: Princeton
Year Started: Approximately 2002, with expansion in 2010
Size: Edible Garden is about 1/10 acre, with additional raised beds
for themed habitat spaces.
What is Grown: A large variety of seasonal fruit and vegetable crops,
herbs, grasses, fruit trees, vines and other plants that fit themed spaces
Leadership: Science teacher John Emmons and a community of
volunteer staff, students and parents
the roof, learning about canning in the days before refrigeration
and the antibacterial properties of vinegar. “The idea is that they
dance through the day, interacting with these concepts,” says
Mentesana. “It’s much more fun that way.”
Fun, of course, is essential for students to connect with the school
garden movement. But the stakes can be serious. Lunch trays with
processed meat, sugary drinks, and fried foods don’t just set children on
a pace toward obesity and poor nutrition; they also remove students
from the natural environment and may reduce attentiveness in class.
Nationally, the movement toward healthier eating is taking off,
helped along by advocates such as celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and
Funding Partners: Community Park School Garden Club, PTO,
Princeton Regional School District and Grounds, Princeton School
Garden Cooperative, CP staff and students, Z Organic Farm,
Boy Scout Eagle Project/Girl Scout Project, staff and students
Involvement in School Curriculum: All grades.The garden is used for
many purposes, including science, history, writing lessons, art classes and
world language instruction.
Involvement in School Cafeteria/Lunches: Garden produce has been
enjoyed by students and staff and used in class lessons; some used in cafe-teria,
but not much yet.
Hopewell Elementary School
Location: Hopewell
Year Started: 2008
Size: 14 raised beds of approximately 12 feet by 3 feet
What is Grown: Kale, garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peas, carrots,
spinach, peppers, eggplant, chard, lettuce, herbs, flowers and more
Leadership: Initially a few parent volunteers, led by Pam Flory, with an inter-ested
group of teachers; now mainly run by parent volunteers with the sup-port
and involvement of the principal, David Friedrich, teachers, and the PTO
Funding Partners: Real Food For Thought and grants from other
organizations
Involvement in School Curriculum: After-school garden club (run by
parent volunteers); teachers sometimes bring their classes into the garden
for various subjects. School currently working on creating ”lessons in a
box” to make it easier for teachers to apply the curriculum to the garden.
Involvement in School Cafeteria/Lunches: Students enjoy the fruits, vegeta-bles,
herbs and flowers whenever they are in the garden. Carrots, lettuce,
spinach, tomatoes, peppers, radishes and more are harvested by parent
volunteers, teachers and students to serve to the students at lunchtime.
Below, from left to right:
Congressman Rush Holt visits the school garden at Hopewell
Elementary School during last fall’s NJ Farm to School Week;
each grade at St. Philip’s Academy has its own themed garden;
trellis at the Waldorf School of Princeton stands ready to support
this season’s beans and gourds; the Alder Avenue Middle School
garden is closely tied to science, math, and other curriculums;
colorful rain barrels were the result of a student contest held in
collaboration with Alder Avenue Middle’s art department.

DOES YOUR SCHOOL HAVE A GARDEN?
The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services,
Division of Family Health Services, Child and Adolescent Health
Program is compiling a list of school gardens, which will be post-ed
on their website in the spring of 2012 and will link to the New
Jersey Farm to School Network website. School officers interest-ed
in having their school garden listed should email program
manager Marsha Fields at Marsha.Fields@doh.state.nj.us.
ediblejersey spring 2012 41
First Lady Michelle Obama. Statewide, schools have made gains
working with food vendors to bring fresh, local food to cafeterias.
But the school garden is the centerpiece of the Farm to School mis-sion;
it is the place where children see, firsthand, that real food is
colorful and crisp, and doesn’t come in a package or from a drive-through
window.
“The solutions are really elegant in their simplicity,” says
Mullen. “All we need to do is return to the foods and the behav-iors
that predated the [obesity] epidemic. It’s not the kids who cre-ated
these problems, but with these gardens, they can help get us
back on track.”n
Jersey City Public Middle School 4
Location: Jersey City
Year Started: Spring 2010
Size: Eight 6-foot beds on a rooftop terrace outside a science classroom
and greenhouse, six tree planters, one 40-foot annuals garden
What is Grown: Pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, peppers,
herbs, carrots, lettuces, radishes, annual flowers, and fruit trees
(including apricots, apples, sour cherries and peaches)
Leadership: Science teacher Melissa Khiry with a garden club
of middle school students
Funding Partners: City Green, 21st Century
Involvement in School Curriculum: The gardens are fully integrated
into the science and environmental science curriculum.
Involvement in School Cafeteria/Lunches: No cafeteria involvement,
but students harvest from the garden for classroom celebrations.
Paterson Public School 3
Location: Paterson
Year Started: 2010
Size: Nine 15-foot beds on a huge, city-owned corner lot
What is Grown: “Three Sisters” garden (corn, beans and squash), pizza
garden, garlic, onions, collards, salad fixin’s, herbs, strawberries and native
plants in a surrounding butterfly garden
Leadership: Science teachers Maureen Bruins and Bernadette Bryant
Funding Partners: City Green, New Jersey Agricultural Society
Involvement in School Curriculum: The gardens are fully integrated
into the K–8 science curriculum.
Involvement in School Cafeteria/Lunches: No cafeteria involvement,
but students harvest from the garden for classroom celebrations. Produce
is also harvested during the summer for the nearby homeless shelter.
St. Philip’s Academy
Location: Newark (Rooftop)
Year Started: 2007
Size: 4,600 to 4,800 square feet
What is Grown: Themed gardens for each grade,
plus “the farm” for 7th and 8th grade students
Leadership: Faculty member Frank Mentesana, director of EcoSPACES,
plus considerable teacher involvement
Funding Partners: School fundraising provides capital
Involvement in School Curriculum:Woven into entire curriculum
for all grade levels.
Involvement in School Cafeteria/Lunches: Salad greens grown in
science lab space; produce grown in garden used in school
salad bar.
Waldorf School of Princeton
Location: Princeton/Montgomery border, on 20-acre semirural campus
Year Started: Circa 1990, with formal garden teacher hired in 1995
Size: About one acre of garden, greenhouse, orchard and compost area
What is Grown: Vegetables, herbs, fruit, and plants related to
grade-specific projects, such as broomcorn or cover crops
Leadership: Gardening teacher Suzanne Ives Cunningham, with assistants
Funding Partners: None, though the school occasionally applies for and
receives grants
Involvement in School Curriculum: Projects supplement and reinforce
academic lessons at every grade level, across all subjects.
Involvement in School Cafeteria/Lunches: No formal cafeteria
program. Food grown in school garden is routinely incorporated
into snacks and other offerings enjoyed in each classroom
throughout the year.
Photographs:Alder Avenue Middle School photos courtesy of AtlantiCare; all other photos courtesy of the respective schools.

Growing Bodies; Growing Minds: School Gardens Are about More Than Just Nutrition for New Jersey’s Students

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Growing Bodies; Growing Minds: School Gardens Are about More Than Just Nutrition for New Jersey’s Students