Welcome! The Rainier Beach Learning Garden is a special space for students to learn about the natural world, support healthy habits, and cultivate an ethic of collaboration and cultural appreciation. The garden enhances our school curriculum through:
- Supporting education across the curriculum with hands-on learning in science, math, literature, social studies, art, and environmental stewardship.
- Allowing young people to experience the natural world up-close and first-hand.
- Creating a dynamic, living classroom for teaching ecology and sustainability.
- Allowing young people to participate in the cycle of growing food and eating it.
- Helping young people develop a sense of ownership and responsibility.
- Improving health by heightening young people’s taste for fresh fruits and vegetables and providing a non-traditional opportunity for physical activity.
- Helping young people understand the value of diversity by exploring historical contributions from cultures worldwide to what we eat today.
- Cultivating community through working toward a shared goal and recognizing the many different skills necessary to sustain a thriving garden.
Garden classes begin in October for PreK, Kindergarten, and 5th grade. Through a 5-week environmental stewardship curriculum, students will learn plant and soil science, care of natural resources, and healthy eating. Best of all, students will participate in growing their own food, cooking it, and eating it!
Throughout the school year, all grades will participate in garden education with Garden Coordinator Maren Neldam. Students will dig in the dirt, plant seeds and transplants, and harvest what they sow. Students will also learn healthy recipes through the Harvest in the Classroom cooking program.
Volunteers can help maintain the garden, assist Maren with garden or cooking classes, be a guest chef in the classroom, contribute a vegetable-based family recipe to our cooking program, help with future garden design and construction, or contribute other special skills. We are looking for someone with carpentry skills to help us build worm bins and some with art skills to help bring added beauty into the garden.
As we expand the garden, we will be looking for volunteers to contribute ideas for making the garden a community space to be used during the school day, after school, on weekends, and in the summer!
If you would like to volunteer, please contact Maren at marenneldam@seattletilth.org or (206) 914-5600
Have some extra supplies hanging around the house? Check out our garden wish list:
- Kneeling pads
- Magnifying glasses
- Kid-size wheelbarrows
- A greenhouse
- Bug boxes
- Children's books about gardening
Seattle Tilth
4649 Sunnyside Avenue N, Room 120
Seattle, WA 98103
South Shore Families help build Learning Garden
For five days at the end of August 2009, nearly 50 volunteers gathered at our school to build paths and raised beds in the new Learning Garden, located between the tennis courts and ball fields at Rainier Beach Playfield. They dug sod, spread gravel, laid edging, built raised beds and filled the beds with dirt. Herbs and winter vegetables were planted in the six raised beds, which are arranged in a circle, like the petals of a giant flower.
Thanks to everyone who loaned tools, attended a work party (or two! or three!), recruited their friends and family to help, publicized the work parties and pledged to continue investing sweat equity into this amazing project. Together, we have built a beautiful gathering place to be enjoyed by our students, families and neighbors!
September 2009 School Beat article
