A 4-H club in Erie County, “The Ladybugs,” recently videotaped the process of a bonsai tree project they completed. The Erie County 4-H Staff graciously shared the video with us. Enjoy!

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A recent study, the “Impact of Garden-Based Learning on Academic Outcomes in Schools: Synthesis of Research between 1990 and 2010,” published in the Review of Educational Research in February 2013, determined that garden-based learning had positive impacts on student’s grades, knowledge, attitudes and behavior.  The study reviewed 152 articles regarding the effects of garden-based learning and ultimately decided to include 48 studies in a final synthesis.

Results of this study’s review showed a multitude of positive impacts on both direct and indirect academic outcomes.  Of the 40 studies assessing direct learning outcomes, 83% found positive effects.  Science had the highest proportion of positive effects, followed by math with language arts.  Positive outcomes were often attributed to “direct, hands-on experiences that made classroom learning relevant.” In regards to indirect academic outcomes, 80% of studies were positive; social development surfaced most frequently and positively.

Although results of the study were consistent across programs, student samples, and school types, the study calls for increased research rigor in order to systematically understand the academic learning incomes related to garden-based learning.

Interested in exploring how our garden-based curricula can be integrated into your school, family or community gardens? Our lessons, projects, and publications offer a variety of activities, projects, and curriculum guides that can help get you started.

A Cornell University study published in a special issue of Developmental Psychology (Vol. 49:3) reveals that “children are natural scientists” who can “gather and assess evidence from the world around them.”

The study, lead by Tamar Kushnir, the Evalyn Edwards Milman Assistant Professor of Child Development and the director of the Cornell College of Human Ecology’s Early Childhood Cognition Laboratory, shows that preschooler’s can “infer what a person might know from watching what they do…and they can then use this [information] to choose whom to learn from.”

Researchers found that three to four-year olds’ understanding of cause and effect is influenced by information from other people, and that they can discern good sources of information from bad.  Three to four-year olds, the study finds, are not entirely credulous.

Want to teach and cultivate the next generation of “natural scientists?” Cornell Garden-Based Learning offers a variety of multi-disciplinary activities which target knowledge and skill-building in the garden.  Seed to Salad emphasizes decision-making and a multi-disciplinary approach while youth grow salad gardens. Dig Art! Cultivating Creativity in the Garden integrates gardening with the arts and ecological literacy.  Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners (VVfG) and Vegetable Varieties Investigation (VVi) utilizes a citizen science approach to teach middle and high school aged youth about preserving biodiversity and connecting with the community.  

Request for Proposals to Create County-based Ecologically-Designed Demonstration Gardens

Cornell Garden-based Learning (CGBL) is requesting mini-proposals from county-based Cornell Cooperative Extension programs to establish demonstration gardens in their county utilizing innovative methods of ecological design that may include but is not limited to permaculture, beneficial insects, soil building techniques or rain gardens.

Availability: Grants will only be awarded to CCE county-based programs in or partnering with community horticulture or youth development.

Funding: Applicants must be a CCE county-based office/program and can be (but is not required to be) submitted in collaboration with another county garden project/organization. CGBL will support six gardens, two at $400, and four at $250. Funding may be used for any and all necessary supplies including: plant materials, garden supplies, fencing, raised beds materials and signage. Funding may be used for, but is not limited to, expanding a 2013 Vegetable Variety for Gardeners (VVfG) Trial Garden project.  

How will funds be distributed? County programs will purchase supplies, and provide CGBL receipts for reimbursement. Note: Receipts must be submitted with proper paperwork within one year from the date the grant is awarded.

Application deadline and more details >> Be sure to download the FULL PDF here: Small is Beautiful_Final

Question – Contact Liz Falk  erf59@cornell.edu

In the following TED talk, Pam Warhurst, Chair of the Board of the Forestry Commission in Great Britain, discusses the creation of Incredible Edible.  Incredible Edible is a world-wide initiative Warhurst co-founded which is dedicated to growing food locally and which has also helped to implement food and garden education programs in schools and communities.

The local food movement, Warhurst states, “is a movement for everyone…if you eat, you’re in.” The language of food, Warhurst states, cuts across age, income, and culture, and “we are all part of the solution.”

Warhust urges communities to “make food visible” and to “encourage our schools to take [food issues] seriously.” “If we want to inspire the farmers of tomorrow,” Warhurst states, “let us say to every school: create a sense of purpose around the importance of the environment, local food, and soils.  Put that at the heart of your school culture and you will create a different generation.”

Ready to get involved in the local food movement?  Learn about specific vegetables and how to grow them with our Growing Guides. Check out our Seed to Salad project which engages young people in growing salad gardens of their own.  Get involved with Youth Grow, a leadership program that trains youth to become actively involved in learning about and transforming their local food systems.  Read about Discovering our Food System, an experiential learning program about how food gets from farm to table and how we, as eaters, are part of the process.

This just in… Check out this Eco-Schools program from the National Wildlife Federation. The Eco-Schools program strives to model environmentally sound practices, provide support for greening the curriculum and enhance science and academic achievement. Additionally, it works to foster a greater sense of environmental stewardship among youth. Eco-Schools is currently being implemented in more than 50 countries around the world.

Through school-based action teams of students, administrators, educators and community volunteers, Eco-Schools combines effective “green” management of the school grounds, facilities and the curriculum.

Once a school has registered and implemented the seven steps, it can apply for an Eco-Schools award. There are three levels of the award system. The first two levels are the Bronze and Silver awards which are self-assessed. The top level is the Green Flag award, which must be assessed by an Eco-Schools USA assessor and renewed every two years. A school is considered to be a permanent Eco-School once it has gained its fourth Green Flag.

North Country Jr. Iron Chef registration is OPEN – and both the middle and high school divisions are more than half full!

On December 1st schools/organizations can register more than one team per division.

Visit the event website at http://ncjrironchef.org/ to learn more or register a team.

More about the event… NC Jr. Iron Chef is a competition for teams of middle and high school students from Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence Counties, NY. The challenge is to develop healthy recipes, using a combination of local and commodity foods, that could be prepared in a school cafeteria. On competition day each team will prepare their recipe and present it to a panel of distinguished judges who will choose the winners! North Country Jr. Iron Chef… offers a positive, hands-on experience with healthy food for youth, shown to increase the likelihood that students will select and consume these foods; provides an opportunity to learn about and build lifelong skills related to healthy food purchasing and preparation; is a creative approach to addressing school food issues and engaging youth in the dialogue; & promotes the incorporation of local foods into school menus. North Country Jr. Iron Chef will be held on March 9, 2013 and is a project of the Health Initiative, in partnership with St. Lawrence University. Learn more at http://ncjrironchef.org/.

It can be a challenge to meaningfully integrate gardening and learning.  We really like the way Angela McGregor Hedstrom uses essential questions to expand on the gardening experience, and organize the big ideas, particularly with our youngest audiences.

Read this succinct and well-written article, and get started soon!

Angela McGregor Hedstrom taught at the Dryden Elementary School and Happy Way Childcare Center, Dryden, NY, while working with Cornell Garden-Based Learning.

(guest post by Geoffrey Tam)

This summer, I had the privilege of spending a few days a week preparing, implementing and reflecting about gardening lessons for boys aged 14-17 at the moderate security juvenile detention center in Lansing, NY known as the Finger Lakes Residential Center (FLRC). My time at FLRC has been enjoyable, edifying and exciting, and I can honestly say that I feel the residents benefited greatly from the work that we all contributed together as a team.

Two women who contributed invaluably to the success of the program, instituted under the New York State Grow to Learn initiative, were my teaching and lesson partner, Audrey Baker, and the summer gardening teacher, Connie Bernard. Without Audrey’s horticultural expertise, garden-based teaching experience, and overall exuberance for plants, youth and empowerment, this program would have taken a much weaker complexion. Likewise, Connie’s incredible rapport with the boys, her irrepressible desire to discipline, coddle and encourage them, and her unstoppable ability to assert her will in the support of those around her made her the most valuable asset to our cause by a long shot. Connie was a miracle worker at motivating students to get out of bed, come to her class, and behave themselves out of self-respect and amused adoration for her. My role in the entire operation was to try and make the other key player’s jobs easier and to optimize/enhance their impact and efficacy.

The true joy of the work that we did together was our time spent with the young men of the FLRC in the garden. I hope that for these young men, I was able to represent a positive, consistent and encouraging male presence in their lives. I enjoyed their teasing questions about girls at Cornell, my personal life and my interests. I appreciated sharing laughs and exclamations of how big the vegetables were and hearing stories about their lives. The energy and excitement that many of the boys brought to the garden and the comments such as, “when I’m out here I don’t feel like I’m locked up” helped to validate the importance of an aspect of what I believe Grow to Learn is trying to accomplish in facilities like the FLRC.

Other than the natural wonder of growing robust and recognizable fruits and veggies by their own hands and the new tastes of fresh garden produce, the students were generally highly receptive to whatever horticultural information was presented to them. Popular lessons included insect and pest management—wherein students were able to shoo away flea beetles from our kale plants with a natural thyme oil spray—and anything that allowed the students to see the immediate impacts of their work such as planting, harvesting, and cooking!

The Grow to Learn program at FLRC was successful to me because it gave the young men at that facility a sink for their energy, creativity, frustrations, and it allowed them to create positive change in a way that granted them power and control over something tangible. I believe, and would venture that Audrey and Connie would agree with me, that this small freedom of working the land, is seen by the young men in the facility as a tremendous gift. ~ by Geoff Tam

On-line Garden-Based Learning courses for the Fall

The following horticulture 6 week distance learning courses will be offered this fall for school, community-based educators, or volunteers who want to enhance their garden-based learning program. For each of these courses, participants earning a cumulative outstanding or satisfactory grade will be awarded 3 Cornell University Continuing Education Units and a certificate of participation.

Planning and Organizing Sustainable Gardening Programs – Starts Sept. 4.

Looking to start a school or community-based garden program, but do not know where to begin? This course focuses on the foundations and benefits of garden-based learning, and provides the tools, resources, and collaborative support needed to plan, organize and develop a successful and sustainable gardening program that fits your organization’s needs.

Teaching and Learning in the School Garden – Starts Oct. 8.

Focusing on the foundations, benefits, and teaching strategies of garden-based learning (GBL), participants will build a toolbox of resources for developing a school gardening program that meets cross-curricular needs. Case study, research, and GBL resources are evaluated through group discussion, learning activities, and reflective journals. Educational theory will be put into practice using real-world tools, through collaboration, practicum, small and whole group discussion, lesson plan assignments, and the final portfolio project.

Find out more about these and other distance learning courses offered by the Department of Horticulture at our distance learning site.