 It's no secret that gardens are epicenters for integrated learning - planning, planting, and growing an array of vegetables, fruits, and native plants gives students an experiential window into a host of academic subjects, not to mention nutrition education and physical activity. Gardens lend themselves naturally to inquiry- and project-based learning, helping students to deeply engage with their own education as they problem-solve, work together, and make a difference in their schools and communities.
 Garden to Cafeteria programs make excellent garden-based projects for students. Helping transform their produce from "lettuce to lunch" helps students learn via real-world challenges, and gives them a chance to show off their hard work to peers and staff alike. This doesn't mean your schoolyard raised bed need to turn into a production farm. Garden to Cafeteria programs come in all shapes and sizes, and the best programs keep the focus on student learning, even if it means that garden produce makes up only a tiny portion of cafeteria offerings.
As with any school garden project, the best advice is to start small and build slowly on student successes. Recruiting a variety of partners helps, too - kitchen staff are a particularly critical piece in Garden to Cafeteria initiatives. Luckily, many are willing and excited to be a part of the school garden.
Food service regulations can sometimes feel intimidating to Garden to Cafeteria hopefuls. Some are surprised to find that federal policy actually encourages schools to cultivate gardens and incorporate the produce into school meals.
We hope you will peruse this newsletter for details on policy, protocol, and ideas for connecting your school garden with the cafeteria! |
Seven years ago, Carl Welke, food service director for the Weston School District, went for a walk around the school grounds. Stopping next to a field full of weeds, he thought, “This would be a great place for a garden.” That day, he called a recent Weston alumnus, and asked if he would be interested in helping plant some corn on school grounds. “I have wanted to do that for so long,” the former student said. Forty-five minutes later, the alum showed up at Welke’s door with a tractor and plow. “Where do you want your garden?,” he asked. Later, Welke went to the superintendent with his garden plans: “I don’t know if I was supposed to do this,” he said, “but maybe you can okay it with the school board.” And Weston had its first garden.
Welke is enthusiastic and dedicated about using garden produce in the lunches he prepares – but he is also very realistic. “It’s really hard to grow enough to use in the school lunch program because of the quantity you need sometimes. We can grow beans, but don’t have the time to harvest and prepare the thirty pounds it takes for an average lunch period, and we don’t have the freezer space or time to preserve them. But we use the garden as much as possible – we use it where we can, when we can.”
In addition to the extra work that he and garden manager Steve Gilbert put into the garden program, Weston is able to maintain such a large garden because the school district connects the community to the project whenever they can. A school bus driver with a rotavator tills the garden each spring and fall. Agriculture students help with machine repair and laying the plastic and drip tape used in the gravity system that captures water from the bus garage roof. When a staff member’s mother sold her farm, he arranged to dig up her 100-year-old asparagus patch and move it to the school. “He just loaded the roots and a ton of dirt onto a trailer and delivered it,” Welke said. Several years ago, community members were able to buy a fruit tree to donate to the school, which now has a collection of apple, pear, and plum trees. In the summer, the garden becomes a small Community Supported Agriculture operation – selling just enough produce to provide money for seeds and supplies, and a small stipend for a summer garden manager. In the past food has been taken and donated at local senior centers and this fall, the public is invited to make a stop at Weston for a school garden lunch during the Fermentation Festival.
While some schools, like Weston, have the space and volunteer power for a two-acre growing project, Welke doesn’t necessarily advise scaling up. “It’s a lot of work,” he admits. “Keep it small, grow what you have space for, think about when it’s going to mature, who’s going to be around to manage and pick these crops in the 
For those new to WSGI, we couldn't leave out these amazing resources. "Got Dirt?" will walk you through starting a school garden, while "Got Veggies?" will help you implement a garden-based nutrition curriculum. "Cultivating Childhood Wellness through Gardening" is an online training that will help you establish and utilize a school garden. You can watch the entire training or select specific chapters.