Welcome to The Children's Gardening Program at the Aurora-St. Anthony Peace Sanctuary Garden

The first Children's Garden began in 2012. It was founded through a partnership between the Aurora-St. Anthony Peace Garden and the University of Minnesota Extension Ramsey County Master Gardeners (Land Connectors). The Children's Garden is a once a week drop-in program for kids 5 to 105 and encourages intergenerational learning. Kids play in the dirt while planting and weeding, growing and eating plants over the course of nine weeks in the summer. In the Children's Gardening Program, we learn how to be stewards and protectors of natural resources.

There is no formal registration process for the Children's Garden Program. We encourage gardeners, neighbors, parents and grandparents, and collaborators to show up every week—but we don't ask anyone to make a commitment to doing so. We ask everyone to show up when they can, wear a nametag so we can get to know each other, and stay for as long as they like. We learn how to better serve the Rondo community every year with our program. We continue to build relationships and support emerging leaders, some of whom attened the Children's Garden themselves. We will continue to reshape and transform our work to respond to political and cultural shifts, climate crisis, and other changes and challenges that arise.

Because of concerns about the Covid-19 Public Health Crisis and construction going on in the garden, our first six meetings were held virtually. The garden construction was performed in partnership with the Urban Farm & Garden Alliance (UFGA) and the University of Minnesota Engineers Without Borders (EWB) student group. Over the course of the school year, EWB students and UFGA collaborators met weekly to plan garden improvements like a water catchment system, a permeable paver path that made the garden accessible for folks using wheelchairs and walkers, and more! We planned on having the project done by early summer but our ambitious plans took longer than expected. EWB students contributed immensly to the Peace Sancutuary Garden and the Children's Garden Program. These kinds of partnerships are what make the program great and are at the core of our planning. Learn more about our partners and collaborators on our About page.

You can find our curriculum and resources on this website. If you have questions, are interested in volunteering with our program, or starting your own, please email us at urbanfarmandgardenalliance@gmail.com or find us on Facebook.