For my “day job,” I recently completed an article about the school gardening movement.

Researching and writing this admittedly too-short piece was a transformative experience for me. I interviewed a principal, a “garden champion,” and the school’s garden funder and learned about their vision to create a “garden as school” campus. Later, I spoke to a grandmother in Ohio who saw how vegetable gardening brightened her grandchildren’s lives and established a school gardening network in her local community. I spoke to the head of the National Gardening Association and found out about the hard work in raising funds for such programs.

I quickly learned I was just touching the tip of the iceberg on this topic.

Benefits of School Gardening

The take-home message about school gardening is this: It’s not about teaching children how to grow a tomato. School gardening teaches children about nutrition and nurturing. It can be a classroom for all school topics from social studies and biology to history and finance. School gardens are places where troubled children can find release and where the playing field is leveled between cliques. School gardens are where children grow into leaders.

I had the honor recently of attending a keynote presentation by Sam Kass, the White House assistant chef and a senior policy advisor for Michelle Obama’s Healthy Food Initiatives. He spoke about the First Lady’s purpose for the garden, which is really to get children excited about gardening and eating the fruits of their labor. Give a kid a broccoli plant to grow, she believes, and they’ll be so much more ready to eat it. Something in our society has been insisting that children just won’t eat vegetables. Where does that come from? And why are we camouflaging the veggies when we present them to children?

Getting Children to Love Vegetables

Sam related the story of one White House Garden event where the simply chopped up fresh raw veggies and let the kids eat them with dip. One young girl had loaded her plate with raw cauliflower, and he later spotted her in a corner of the garden stuffing her face with the white florets. When asked if she really liked it, the girl said yes. Then she asked what it was.

How and why do we let our children not know about vegetables? It’s time we get back on that train and educate our youth about fresh fruits and vegetables. With the ominous prediction that one in three children will develop diabetes, this is not just a quaint idea. It’s a top medical imperative.

Who will step up to be the school garden champion in your community?