Schools eating green

Episcopal Life Online reports on how Episcopal schools are linking their lunches with the garden and creating awareness about maintaining a healthy planet.

The link between the health of our planet and of ourselves comes into focus when we consider our food system. School lunches, school gardens and even school composting play an important part in that system for children at Episcopal schools.
When parent Rob Gaon approached the Rev. Jesse Vaughan, headmaster at St. Michael's Episcopal Day School in Carmichael, California, in the fall of 2005 with his dream of a school garden, he wasn't sure what the response would be. Gaon had started gardening when he moved to the Sacramento area a few years earlier and had fallen in love with the practice.

In the spring of 2006, Vaughan walked Gaon out to the space where he thought the garden should be, and the dream began to be realized.

"The amazing thing is how the whole school community has embraced the garden," says Gaon.

That summer, a group of parents put the garden together.

Now there is a garden parent for each classroom, and grandparents' club members support the garden with their labor and fund raisers.

"The teachers have received it with open arms," says Gaon. The lower grades have been most active, but even the seventh- and eighth-grade classes are involved, planting a Shakespeare garden to complement their English studies.

The children are excited to pick and eat snap peas or strawberries, and the harvest is included on the school cafeteria salad bar and vegetarian soups. "We have an amazing woman in our cafeteria," says Gaon. Signs are posted identifying produce from the school garden when it is a featured part of any menu.

Read about it here.