June 12, 2016
Friendship Woodridge Elementary and Middle Charter School
2959 Carlton Ave. NE, Washington DC, 20018
The school garden was established in partnership with Washington Youth Garden in 2013 in a vacant lot located in the front of the school. It's one of the largest school gardens in DC and located in a residential area with lots of neighborly foot traffic. With the support of FoodCorps, the garden now includes a raised bed section for family members to use, as well as a mini in-ground farm for the production of greens for the school cafeteria!
We just installed gutters on the pavilion. With additional funds we would like to install rain barrels for water catchment as well as interpretive signage to teach students about reducing run-off and protecting our watershed.
John Burroughs Elementary School
1820 Monroe St. NE, Washington, DC 20018
The John Burroughs Elementary School (JBES) garden program started in 2011 through a partnership with the Washington Youth Garden. It has continued to grow to include 10 raised beds for vegetable gardening, two in-ground beds for herbs and pollinator habitat, and four courtyard garden beds for the Head Start scholars as well as a newly planted fruit orchard. As a STEM school, JBES uses the garden as a multi-faceted resource in all classrooms. Students help plant, water, weed and harvest in the garden while learning more about science, engineering, math, personal health and the environment as well as practicing their public speaking, analytic and leadership skills.
Watering the garden throughout the summer is always a difficult and challenging task that places a lot of responsibility on our summer volunteers. We are hoping to install an irrigation system to help keep our garden alive while alleviating the volunteers' responsibility and providing a tangible project to teach students about water conservation.
Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School
3700 Oakview Terrace NE, Washington, DC 20017
The Stokes School Garden had been a plan since the inception of the school, but was not truly possible before moving to our current location eight years ago under our first Wellness Coordinator, Trisha Nakano. The school garden is now ten garden beds, 17 fruit trees, a reflecting space/outdoor classroom, a seven bin composting system, a butterfly garden and a bee hive with plans for expanding into a greenhouse and another 1500 square feet of planting space through sheet mulching and hill terracing projects this summer. The garden programs are becoming steadily more woven into the science, social studies, math and art curricula of the school with projects in every grade from Pre-K to 5 touching the gardens or compost system at least once per year.
We are hoping to install an outdoor sink/hand washing station and electrical outlet installed near the garden to encourage garden to plate education.
