The Heathcote Garden
The Heathcote Garden is located in the front of Heathcote School. Each grade studies an aspect of the garden that connects to the classroom curriculum. The children participate in the design, planting, tending, and harvesting of the garden.
The classroom garden lessons are reinforced in the Learning Center. Themes related to the garden, such as sustainability and caring, will be emphasized.
Last year's spring harvest was a bountiful and delicious success! Please visit the garden when you have a chance but remember: Please don't pick the daisies... or vegetables... as they as part of the garden curriculum.
Our garden consultants are Toby and Alexandra of Kaleidoscope Garden Design.
For a wonderful book about one school garden and the possibilities and significance of school gardens, see: Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea, by Alice Waters.
Alice Waters is the owner and chef of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California. Ms. Waters is also the creator of the Chez Panisse Foundation whose primary beneficiary is the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley. For more information about the foundation, see: www.chezpanissefoundation.org
Principles of Edible Education (From Edible Schoolyard, by Alice Waters)
- Food is an Academic Subject: A school garden...ecology and gastronomy... helps bring alive every subject, from reading and writing to science and art.
- School Provides Lunch for Every Child: Good food is a right not a privilege. Providing it every day brings children into a positive relationship with their health, their community, and the environment.
- Children Learn by Doing: Hands-mind education, in which the children themselves do the work in the vegetable beds and on the cutting boards, awakens their senses and opens their minds, both to their core academic subjects and to the world around them.
- Beauty is a Language: A beautifully prepared environment, where deliberate thought has gone into everything, from the garden paths to the plates on the tables, communicates to children that we care about them.
Come visit and enjoy the beautiful Heathcote Garden!