School Gardens

Out for a stroll one day, I past this garden, and here the photo only shows a small half of the of the full size. These bins are home to growing vegetables in a local school yard. I think that is fabulous on so many levels. All schools should have vegetables gardens. All children should know about plants, about how good food grows, and have access to fresh vegetables at lunch time. Every child the world over. The greater percentage of a lunch should be fresh and locally grown, not processed and plastic packed. And if the kids take part in the gardening, there is pride, skills, knowledge, and love built into their lunches as a bonus and who can argue that? And one has to question how come this is not standard in education. And then one has to question why society has evolved that this is not standard practice. I certainly did not have the experience.  It took me years of self exploration and research to understand what should be standard. Give kids this knowledge and watch a better relationship with the earth flows, watch as the rates of eating disorders drop, watch as front lawns become gardens more commonly and a hundred other fantastic consequences roll out. And you live in an apartment?  Try this for an inspirational link: http://www.ted.com/talks/britta_riley_a_garden_in_my_apartment.html. Or this too on gardens: http://www.ted.com/talks/ron_finley_a_guerilla_gardener_in_south_central_la.html. And one more fabulous piece while I am on a Ted roll: http://www.ted.com/conversations/7128/ save_millions_of_trees_per_yea_1.html Life in the garden is great and that is a sweet fact of life.

SUGARBEE XX   10/06/13  and one more thing, half hour after I completed todays post, I happened to watch the following Ted talk, a highly appropriate talk today and exactly what I have blogged about:  http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_ritz_a_teacher_growing_green_in_the_south_bronx.html Enjoy!