Planning Urban School Gardens

Author: Sarah Pounders

There’s a lot in the news lately about “nature-deficit disorder,” a phrase coined by author Richard Louv to describe the behavioral problems suffered by children who spend little or no time in contact with the natural world. Many studies show that it’s vital for children’s health and development to have regular access to natural settings, but this is extremely challenging for children in urban locations. Although cities across the country are recognizing the importance of green space as a community-building tool with psychological, social, physical, and economic benefits, daily access to nature through outdoor experiences is often minimal or non-existent for urban American youth.

The answer to this predicament? Install a garden at every school! Fortunately, it's possible to design a garden to fit any space and budget. Even if your schoolyard is paved, you can plant in containers and raised beds on concrete and asphalt-covered surfaces, on rooftops and balconies, or at the very least, in hanging baskets and window boxes. Gardens like these are affordable and achievable, and do provide students with the chance to observe nature, learn about lifecycles and ecosystems, gain respect and appreciation for their environment, and to simply soak up the abundant sensory delights offered by the green earth.

Design Options

At urban schools, outdoor space is at a premium and is often completely covered asphalt or concrete. As you look around your urban schoolyard, a lush, green garden may be the last image to come to mind, but with a little creativity, planning, and hard work, a garden can be installed in any school setting. Here are some popular urban garden options:

Container Gardens
You can configure container gardens to fit whatever space you have available. Typically, garden containers are pots and troughs made of clay, plastic, or wood, but plants aren’t fussy – they’ll grow in anything that holds soil and has drainage holes. Experiment with whatever is at hand, from discarded 5-gallon buckets to an old bathtub! Window boxes and hanging baskets are great if you have little or no ground space.

By adding handles or wheels, or placing containers on wheeled platforms, you can make your garden mobile, and can move plants around the space to where they’ll grow best as the season advances or as conditions change (e.g., the angle of the sun shifts slightly each day). If threat of vandalism is extreme, you can move containers to sheltered or locked area.

Choose containers that suit the needs of the plants you want to grow. For instance, herbaceous annuals and veggies with shallow root systems (nasturtiums, impatiens, lettuce, radishes) can grow in small containers, but deep-rooted veggies (tomatoes, potatoes), perennials, shrubs, and even trees need larger, deeper containers. See our Classroom Project, Gardening in Containers, for theme ideas, a plant list, and curriculum connections.

Raised Beds
Raised beds are framed structures, typically 9 inches (on soil) to 2 feet (on paved surfaces), made of rot-resistant wood (like cedar), concrete blocks, or recycled plastic planking and filled with soil. Although they require more initial investment than a traditional in-ground garden, the benefits of raised beds pay off in the long run: they’re easier to cultivate; you don’t have to worry about toxins in the soil, such as lead; there are fewer weed and drainage problems; and the raised soil and plants are protected from crushing footsteps. Plus, design is flexible – you can build them to be handicap accessible, and to fit the space available, whatever the shape or size. For more information about raised beds, check out Making a Raised Bed Garden

Rooftop Gardens
Rooftops have the benefit of getting a lot of sun and being less susceptible to vandalism. You can keep it simple and put containers on the school roof, or you can plan a “green roof.” This is a method where plants are installed in a growing medium that is spread directly onto a special multilayered barrier attached to the rooftop. Green roofs require a great deal of planning and engineering, require professional installation, and are usually quite costly, but they have the benefit of reducing air conditioning costs and stormwater runoff. Whatever you choose to grow on the roof, first check with administrators and your facilities manager to make sure the roof is safe for children and can bear the weight of the soil, plants, and containers.

Click here for an overview of green roofs.

Organizing and Planning

The planning process for a school garden is universal (see Planning, below), but urban garden programs need to pay special attention to the following challenges.

Access to Water
To prevent others from using the school's water resources, many urban school buildings do not install outdoor faucets. A fairly inexpensive although tedious solution is to attach a long hose to an indoor spigot. A more expensive but convenient solution is to run a water line to the garden for the installation of an automatic irrigation system. A solution that falls somewhere in the middle is to use a rain barrel, a container designed to catch and save rain water from roof gutters (though you can also use a hose to fill them in times of drought). Rain barrels have spigots so you can attach a hose or decant water into watering cans. Site rain barrels securely so that students can’t get into them or tip them over. Most commercial barrels come with an insect exclusion screen to prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs.

Soil Contamination
In an urban area, you never know what might have happened to the soil before you arrived, so it’s very important to test for hazardous contaminants such as lead. Click here for guidance on how to test for and deal with lead contamination.

If you find that your soil is polluted, you still have options: install containers and raised beds; seek the help of professionals to remediate your site; or choose to plant non-edible species – just be sure that it’s safe for children to work in the soil, and that they wear gloves and wash their hands thoroughly after digging.

Vandalism
Vandalism can be a problem in any school garden, but it’s more prominent in urban areas where population is denser. Time and again, schools report to us that the best solution they have found for preventing vandalism is to get vandals and/or potential vandals involved in the garden (see vignette below). They’ll develop a sense of ownership and therefore concentrate their energies on protecting the space rather than destroying it.

Other suggestions include building strong relationships with neighbors who can watch over the garden when school is not in session. Posting signage can also deter vandals – if people understand the garden has a purpose and is being cared for by students they’re less likely to harm the space.

Vandals become gardeners and grow a community The Oakhurst Community Garden in Decatur, Georgia, was born in 1996 in response to a group of local children vandalizing a neighbor’s garden on their way to and from school. The neighbor, Louise Jackson, told her friend Sally Wylde about the vandals, and together they invited the children to become caretakers of the garden. With the help of a $500 grant from United Way, they restored Jackson’s garden and moved on to create a garden in the median strip in front of Jackson’s house. The children ended up taking tremendous pride in their work, which was honored at a ceremony where Decatur’s then-Mayor, Elizabeth Wilson, presented each child with a certificate of appreciation. This garden project became so popular with local students that a new space was needed. Wylde found suitable land and incorporated the Oakhurst Community Garden Project as a nonprofit organization. Oakhurst Garden now hosts programs for public school kids, community classes for children and adults, summer camps, and activities for community groups. Learn more about Oakhurst Gardens

Safety Concerns
If possible, plant gardens a safe distance from roads or provide secure fences to serve as barriers (both to keep kids in and keep those with bad intentions out). Since outdoor education settings can be a bit more hectic than classrooms, be sure that there’s a good ratio of students to adults for adequate supervision.

Plants should also be considered from a safety standpoint. Avoid plantings that create blind hiding spaces, and, depending on the age of the children, also avoid plants with poisonous parts. (See our plant list for pre-K gardens.)

Plant Selection
The urban environment is very different from nature. Plants are challenged by extreme temperatures, pollution from sidewalks and streets, less-than-optimal space for roots, and unusual water flow from paved surface runoff. Choose hardy plants that are resistant to things like car exhaust and de-icing chemicals (link to lists in Resources) Plants that can tolerate variations in water availability, including occasional dry conditions and excessive moisture, are also preferable. Make sure the mature height of your plants fits within your space, and that they’re suited to the light conditions.

Litter
If potentially hazardous litter items such as glass and hypodermic needles are a problem at your site, make sure that the area is constantly monitored and cleared by adults, such as a group of volunteer "garden angels". It also helps to keep the garden well tended year-round, even when school is not in session. If you let the weeds run wild, people will naturally feel more comfortable using it as a dumping site, whereas a well-kept garden inspires more responsible behavior from neighbors.

Recruiting Volunteers
Many urban school gardens are smaller in size and scope than their rural and suburban counterparts, so it may be tempting to go it alone and involve just a couple of teachers in your leadership team. But even a small garden can become overwhelming (think midsummer weeding and watering!) so recruit plenty of volunteers at the outset. If you don’t have enough work in the garden itself to keep volunteers occupied, they can also help you find funding and free resources, write articles for newsletters, hold fundraisers, and so on. Build on their individual skills and strengths. Also, many urban schools say they are challenged to find parent volunteers. Look beyond your school walls and contact local colleges, senior centers, botanical gardens, and garden clubs for potential volunteers.

Delivery of Supplies
Many urban school gardens report that delivery of supplies (soil, mulch, larger tools) is a challenge. Although there is no single solution to help with this problem, be sure to consider it in your planning discussions and figure potential costs into your budget. Look for parents and businesses willing to donate resources and/or time to help specifically with delivery.

Storage
It’s most convenient to have storage for supplies and tools outside near the garden. However, if space or security dictate indoor storage only, you can obtain a tool cart that is easy to wheel out for each garden session. Click here to see an example from the Gardening with Kids Store.

Although it may seem like a daunting task to coordinate the logistics of an urban garden, keep focused on the rewards and adventure for your students, and for you as an educator! The benefits of having a slice of nature for students to experience definitely overshadow the challenges.

Related Lessons and Activities

Cylinder Gardening - An introduction to an inexpensive and practical way to incorporate gardens in urban settings. It requires no prior gardening experience and little preparation.

Urban Weather Investigations - The man-made environment influences microclimates, nowhere more so than the city. Students observe and analyze temperatures and stormwater runoff patterns, in this activity, and consider ways to mitigate the climatic extremes in the urban environment.

Resources and Stories

Planning
Steps to a Bountiful Kids Garden
Designing a Youth Garden
The School Garden Wizard
Gardens for Learning

How-to's and Tips
Top 10 tips for Urban School Gardens
Making a Raised Bed Garden
Lead Contamination in Urban Gardens
Gardening in Containers
High-Performance Plants
Landscape Plants for Special Sites
Plant List for Pre-K Gardens

Stories
Growing Wildlife Habitats
Community Gardener Jill Jones: Growing Bountiful Gardens and Community Pride
A San Antonio Success
A Garden Grows in New York City

Additional Resources
Inch By Inch: Providence Youth Gardens for Change (8-minute online video)
Urban Sprouts School Gardens Blog
School Garden Weekly Blog