Gardening…

• Helps individuals and families connect with others
• Can engage the whole family
• Strengthens youth and adult relationships
• Reduces stress
• Improves wellness through physical activity and consumption of fruits and vegetables
• Leads to reductions in family food expenses

For families:

So You Want to Start a Garden: Taking the First Step (pdf)

Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners (VVfG)

For educators/leaders:

Getting Started with GBL (pdf): Offers the basics to consider if you are starting a new program or wishing to enhance outcomes in an existing program.

Why Garden with Military Family Members? (pdf): A presentation to help rally others and build enthusiasm for a gardening program with military family members. Designed as a guided presentation, or a stand alone.

Why Garden with Military Family Members? (pdf): This poster is also available to download, print, distribute and display. While supplies last get a free glossy print copy of this poster. Email your name and mailing address as well a bit about your interest in gardening with family members to ljb7@cornell.edu.

Cultivating Community with Garden-Based Learning: An archive of the webinar series introducing the fundamentals of garden-based learning program development.

Download a pdf of the tri-fold: Homegrown: Community Gardening on Military Installations

Select activities:

Seed to Salad– Youth grow salad gardens, with emphasis on decision-making and a multidisciplinary approach, including nutrition, physical activity, math, and language arts. Seed to Salad – Spanish Version

Vegetable varieties investigation (Vvi) – Youth interview gardeners about their opinions on vegetable varieties, and submit their findings to an online database that serves as a national online library of vegetable variety data.

Our program’s work to offer garden-based learning resources and support to military helping professionals and military family members is part of the Military-Extension Partnership.

Military Families Learning Network also serve military family service professionals through engaged online communities.

Extension programs and employment are available to all without discrimination. Evidence of noncompliance may be reported through your local Extension office.

 This material is based upon work supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U. S. Department of Defense under Award No. 2009-48667-05833. Developed in partnership with Purdue University and Cornell University.

 Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.