School Gardens

We provide support to school gardens across OUSD to ensure that they are thriving parts of the school community! This includes seeds and plant starts, tools, hands-on technical assistance, policy guidance, and more!

School gardens provide urban children access to nature and reflect each child's inherent right to the following:

Access to healthy, locally-produced food
Understanding of food systems and the natural cycle
Social, economic and health justice
Hands-on alternatives to testing-based instruction
Self-reliance and character-building opportunities
Connection to local community

Freshly planted starts!

Seed & Start

Our Seed & Start program out of The Center greenhouse is conducted in partnership with the UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners. We work together to curate and grow the plants, care for them, and assemble the Seed and Start requests that go out to OUSD school gardens. In the 2024-25 school year, we provided 9,520 plants (a value of $43,136) and 1,661 seeds (a value of $3, 556) to OUSD school gardens!

Hands-On Consultations

EFG Programs team members visit OUSD school gardens and provide hands-on technical assistance to support EFG Champions and other school site staff with maintaining and improving their school gardens.

The Center staff performing a Hands-On Consultation

Hands-On Lessons in Schools

EFG Programs team members provide in-person lessons on the environment, food, and gardens at our schools!

Summer Garden Stewards

Each summer, we provide a stipend to Summer Garden Stewards across OUSD to maintain school gardens to support summer programming and ensure they are ready for the return of students in the fall! During summer 2025, we had 31 Summer Garden Stewards at 30 OUSD sites.

Summer Bounty from MetWest

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