SCHOOLS
Get a garden + the Ranger program in your school now. We have built over 100 in Los Angeles. We move rapidly. We take care of the permits. We make it ridiculously affordable. We are frugal. We can take on existing gardens and we know how to fix things.
You want your group volunteer day to actually mean something? You want lasting impact? We are so busy, we can guarantee almost any date you choose. You want to see results.
HUMANS
It is easy to help out. We are in 100 Los Angeles schools weekly and we care for our 100 gardens 332 days per year. If you want to help , we will put you to work. We are growing so rapidly that no matter what you have to offer, we likely need your talents. Engage today. Volunteer tomorrow.
Summer 2018
The EnrichLA City Farm Camp is back for another summer! Learning the valuable, life-long skills of square foot gardening, healthy eating, and community enhancement are the cornerstones of this summer camp opportunity.
SCHOOL GARDENING?
OUR VALUES
Dominguez High has been a real great growing place. The soil full of nutrients and since we have spent time nuturing the fruit trees, they’ve began to show signs of love to us. Today was all about harvest and mulching with nitrogen rich fava plants…. WE had teams of fava harvesters, teams of cutters and…
Aspire Digs Into the World of the Roly-Poly!
Most kids know a lot about roly-poly’s; they’re cute, they roll up when they get scared and they don’t bite. I wanted the kids to “dig a little deeper” into the world of a roly-poly, but first I gave the kids a little information about these bugs starting with their true name; pill bugs! So…
Working hard in our Magnolia Avenue Elementary garden, using our scientific and artistic skills.
Most of us have held a Roly-poly before…that gentle little garden creature that rolls up into a ball when disturbed or scared. It’s an easy creature to like; they don’t bite, they tickle your hand when they crawl on you and they can protect themselves! Today in the garden, Kinder and 1st grade learned more…
I’ve never quite understood the fear that follows worms. From my experience, about 1 in every 100 kids fears worms but maybe 1 in 20 adults is scared of them. Why is that? Somewhere along the way people are taught to hate them. I believe it’s because they don’t understand them! Not only are…
Taking time to welcome family and staff guests to the garden and to teach them what we know. Plus, snacking. Yum! Also, making sure our garden has good signage in as many languages as we speak at Melrose Avenue Elementary.
This week at St. Patrick’s the kids learned a lot about the precarious state that bees are in! With 1/3 of our crops dependant on bees for pollination, we can’t afford to lose any more bees to flowerless landscapes, pesticides, or crop “food deserts”. Bees depend on pollen for protein and nectar for carbohydrates…
Using reusable containers to replant our Spider Plant babies. Then we use the fence to make it a vertical garden. Afterward we need to make sure to check the moisture of the dirt everyday and water when necessary so our baby plant roots can grow strong. Plus, the general beauty and abundance of our…
With the warmer weather lately, our herbs at Sullivan are flourishing! I brought a lemon today to teach the kids how to make flavored water, a healthier alternative to sodas and juices. They helped me to collect mint leaves off the stems that I had them pass around. And while they were doing so, I…
I brought a little bit of the garden into the classroom on this rainy day. Fortunately, the rain and cloudy weather made it easy to find snails and slugs in the garden. In the classroom, I told the kindergarteners that I brought with me a garden creature for them to observe. We talked about the…
The Woodlawn garden is in full production mode! We have been harvesting lots of lettuce, Swiss chard, and collard greens in the past few weeks. Just recently, the warmer temperatures have given our fruit-bearing plants the boost they needed! Kindergarten and 1st grade searched the garden for fruit that was ready to harvest. We…
Earth Day is a worldwide event in support and protection of the environment. In the Kipp Garden, students are learning that is possible to coexist with nature despite living in urban busy cities. It requires ingenuity and care and appreciation of the natural world. As for now, keeping the edible garden alive and thriving is a great start to…
Students are busy making warm season seedlings, harvesting cool season seeds, and learning about seeds. It is amazing how a tree, flower, fruit, or vegetable grows from a seed. Seeds are life, waiting for its chance to be born, flourish, and provide more seeds at the end of its life cycle. Tiny or as big…
Students are busy making warm season seedlings, harvesting cool season seeds, and learning about seeds. It is amazing how a tree, flower, fruit, or vegetable grows from a seed. Seeds are life, waiting for its chance to be born, flourish, and provide more seeds at the end of its life cycle. Tiny or as big…
Earth Day is a worldwide event in support and protection of the environment. In the garden, students are learning that is possible to coexist with nature despite living in urban busy cities. It requires ingenuity and care and appreciation of the natural world. As for now, keeping the edible garden alive and thriving is a great start to honor…
Today was a fun day at ERES. We made mozzarella cheese with fresh garden thyme as a flavoring. It was delicious. We also harvested a massive golden beet and ate it raw! We also observed some beautiful poppy flowers while we were outside. Such a fun day of food and flowers in the garden!
Students are busy making warm season seedlings, harvesting cool season seeds, and learning about seeds. It is amazing how a tree, flower, fruit, or vegetable grows from a seed. Seeds are life, waiting for its chance to be born, flourish, and provide more seeds at the end of its life cycle. Tiny or as big…
Staying on top of pests and creating the best living conditions for its inhabitants is how a garden stays healthy and productive. Through best practices, careful observations, and a little elbow grease; the students play a role in the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) that keeps their garden bountiful and chemical free. There were plenty of…
Students are busy making warm season seedlings, harvesting cool season seeds, and learning about seeds. It is amazing how a tree, flower, fruit, or vegetable grows from a seed. Seeds are life, waiting for its chance to be born, flourish, and provide more seeds at the end of its life cycle. Tiny or as big…
Last week at Mayberry the kids and I discussed the most abundant and teaming source of life and is literally present everywhere, micro organisms or microbes as I like to call them. The kids learned how one teaspoon of soil can have as many as one billion microbes and their bodies have tons more…
Earth Day is a worldwide event in support and protection of the environment. In the Wilton Garden, students are learning that is possible to coexist with nature despite living in urban busy cities. It requires ingenuity and care and appreciation of the natural world. As for now, keeping the edible garden alive and thriving is a great start to…
There are many colorful flowers blooming at ERHS. Cornflower is a brilliant blue and popular with the bees and butterflies. Blooming green and red lettuce plants have vibrant yellow flowers. We will let the lettuce self seed, so next year we will have volunteer lettuce plants. We planted lots of squash and corn today.
Today’s class at Sullivan was full of lots of activities. The kids planted sunflower seeds, they ate garden broccoli for a snack and we played eye-spy with the kids’ DIY binoculars.
Understanding the garden rules and observing the shapes of leaves enthused the students to explore. Tomato on a carrot with lime and salt was an appreciated garden snack. – Ranger Dan
Earth Day is a worldwide event in support and protection of the environment. In the garden, students are learning that is possible to coexist with nature despite living in urban busy cities. It requires ingenuity and care and appreciation of the natural world. As for now, keeping the edible garden alive and thriving is a great start to honor…
Today we harvested some winter veggies at ALC. Among the veggies we picked were beets and celery. We left some beets in the ground to harvest the greens over the summer. We left some celery so it will self seed, saving us effort in the fall. We saw a big freaky spider too!
Earth Day is a worldwide event in support and protection of the environment. In the garden, students are learning that is possible to coexist with nature despite living in urban busy cities. It requires ingenuity and care and appreciation of the natural world. As for now, keeping the edible garden alive and thriving is a great start to honor…
Hello Garden Friends, This week was another fine week for the worms, we did the first part of the activity indoors due to dry and windy weather. Something that the worms despise due to their wet and wiggly nature. “If they dry, they die,” I told to the kids. So it was important to keep…
Spring has sprung at Berendo. Today we learned about overwintering, which is the practice of letting summer plants live over the winter. This allows for a very early harvest. We have eggplants fruiting already. The mums are blooming for the first time in months. Artichokes hang out beneath the soil until the weather is warm.…
How leaves can differ was the lesson at Carson-Gore. Shape, boarder, arrangement, and attachment of leaves helps identify young plants and similarities in plant families. Bananas, rolled-oats, honey drizzel and fresh chocolate mint leaves. – Ranger Dan
Friday April 20th was our last day at the Micheltorena garden for the Spring semester. Although it was sad for everyone to say bye to the animals and plants, we still had a lot of fun! We spent the day doing maintenance, watering and weeding, and hanging out with the bunnies and chickens a lot.…
Today was ladybug day! I brought some live ladybugs for my preschoolers to observe and we talked about a ladybug’s diet — how they are carnivores and only eat other bugs like aphids — the lifecycle of this beetle — how it’s very similar to a buterfly’s lifecycle — and we also read a great…
Hello Garden Friends, Spring is in the air and the garden is full of fruits and flowers…. and weeds, lol. This week we did some maintenance as a class and then proceeded to enjoy some of the gifts that the garden had to offer. Check out the pics! The kids especially liked eating the raw…
Cool season plants are ending their life cycle, seed saving is a natural and inexpensive method to duplicate last year harvest. Students are learning how to harvest seeds from plants, identify healthy plants that will produce better strains that are well-adapted to local growing conditions. There are three basic parts of a seed in the angiosperms:…
It was a beautiful day in the garden this morning at Toluca Lake Elementary! Many of the plants are flowering and the garden is fi lled with vibrant colors and buzzing pollinators. The students were also buzzing with excitement to be among the plants in the sunshine. Today’s lesson was about pollination and flower reproduction.…
A lesson on defining characteristics of leaves was followed by a leaf hunt in the garden. Students recieved a new set of eyes in understanding the subtle differences that are used to identify and classify plants. Mint, rolled oats, and honey made an interesting snack. – Ranger Dan
Today we learned all about edible flowers. Today in the garden we saw artichoke, pineapple sage, fennel, and radish. These flowers are loved by humans and insects alike. We are excited to see our spring plants growing bigger!
It was another dry week in Los Angeles, so some of my students at Frank Del Olmo hung out with me at recess and did some manually watering. Although we have a wonderful irrigation system at the garden, they get a lot of satisfaction out of watering themselves. Plus, now that it’s becoming even more…
Whenever I teach the food chain — which most students older than second grade are familiar with — I like to teach it in a way that makes connections with the real world. For example, today we learned not only the basics of a food chain — that consumers eat producers — but also the…
May Happenings
Summer is almost here, though it certainly feels like it already. There are only a couple months left in the semester, which means only a couple months left with the kiddos. However, there’s still our summer City Farm Camp to look forward to! Students that join City Farm Camp with EnrichLA will have the opportunity…
Join the Team, Become a Garden Ranger
Garden Rangers are responsible for leading weekly garden-based lessons for students, increasing their knowledge of gardening, complementing classroom curriculum, and maintaining their school gardens by ensuring that the garden is well kept, healthy, and bountiful throughout the year. Being a Garden Ranger is a rewarding and challenging experience! Your main responsibilities are: TEACHING: Engage students with…
Springtime in the Glenfeliz Garden
Welcome back to the garden! It’s been far too long since I’ve posted, but so much has happened in the garden since last time and there’s a lot to catch up on! We have officially moved into the warm season as we have longer sunlight hours and hotter temperatures. As such, the anatomy of…
Today in the garden at Primary Academy we were surrounded by tons of helpful creatures. The second graders learned a lot about worms by getting up close and personal! These little invertabraes not only create delicious compost but they also dig tunnels throughout the soil letting air and water reach even the deepest roots. …
Chop Chop Salad at Woodlawn
Using a knife is a hard tool to master, especially when your 6 years old! The kids at Woodlawn got lots of practice today by helping to chop up a yummy salad! To begin we discuss harvesting and what would happen if we harvested a fruit or vegetable that was not ready to pick. Then…
The kindergarten and 1st grade students at Woodlawn have shown great attention to the garden. They have helped with many garden taskes including leaf clean up, pill bug relocation and composting. So I knew they could handle the care needed to start seeds and keep them moist and warm. During discussion time, we talked about…
Today at Dayton Heights my two SLD classes brought out the seeds we had germinated in the classroom. We learned what it takes for a seed to shed its coat and begin the next chapter of its life cycle. After taking notes the kids went out into the garden and planted their seedlings.…
When kids get a little spooked about bees in the garden, I think it’s important to give them some information on what exactly a bee does. I thought for this lesson I would bring in my bee suit (yep… bee suit!) and show the kids how important it is not to run, yell and wave hands…
Last week, we learned that plants use their flowers to make seeds, but now our students are curious, “how does a flower make a seed?” To answer that question we went straight to the flower and started investigating. Every student got a nasturtium flower which they dissected until they could see yellow pollen on their…
Today we learned about seed saving. This is how we harvest seeds for next years harvest. We saved seeds from favas and arugula. Then we planted corn and squash that we saved from last years garden. We also snacked on mint and lettuce.
Everything has to eat. Students at Weemes took time to examine exactly what that statement means as we talked about food chains and students explored the place some of our garden creatures occupy on the food chain. Roly-polies eat our tomatoes and strawberries, but birds eat roly-polies and then insects eat the bird after it…
In class today we talked about all the ways instructions can be useful. Students brainstormed lots of different new skills they would like to learn how to do. Everything from skateboarding tricks, growing different plants and doing handstands. We discussed how you can find written instructions to help learn how to do almost anything! Then…
Today we harvested lots of delicious veggies, including beets, onions, kale and lettuce. We snacked on some of the food in class. Some of it, the students took home. Others put fresh lettuce on their lunch sandwiches! It was a great chance to learn about integrating garden grown and store bought food.
Students at 6th Ave took time to reflect on all the ways we use plants this week. We discussed how most of our food, housing, clothes and medicine come from plants. The conversation about plants helped us to visualize world systems and our interdependence on plant life and ecosystems. Then, we explored the garden to…
Battle of the Bugs at Stevenson!
All my students love when they hear that today is all about BUGS! Let’s talk about what bugs are beneficial to the garden and what bugs are pests. They were sad to learn that their beloved roly polies were not so great for our plants and surprised that those scary bees are SUPER beneficial to…
In our creative writing class this week, we talked about how people often judge each other and other things by outside appearances. To illustrate this, students described the outward appearance of a peanut and contrasted that with the taste of the peanut inside. After we all munched on our peanuts, we discussed how useless it…
As spring arrives, the colors of the garden are shining. Bright swiss chard, sage flowers, and purple mustard look beautiful. We planted corn, squash, and tomatoes today.
Good Bugs vs. Bad Bugs @ Kester!
It is every kid’s favorite lesson in the garden: BUGS!! So fun to surprise these kids with what bugs are beneficial to the garden and which bugs are pests. Although roly-polies are a much-beloved favorite for this age, these invertebrates are not so great for the garden, and even though bees might scare them a…
Today we harvested and saved seeds. We got seeds from bitter melon, tatsoi cabbage, xmas limas, nasturtiums, and gold potatoes. The potatoes and beans are seeds themselves. We are looking forward to the summer!
Presenting Our Research on Food @ VNMS!
Its a rainy day at Van Nuys Middle School, but perfect timing for the middle schoolers’ presentations of their Food Projects! Each group had been given a different crop: tomato, corn, peas, and watermelon. So proud of all they learned by researching BOOKS, instead of the internet. 🙂 They definitely taught me a thing or…
Today was a great day in the garden. First of all, we found a chrysalis! This is the stage where a caterpillar turns in to a butterfly. We also saw a hole bee, which is a native pollinator. We had two different kinds of carrots as well, one small and round, one long and skinny.…
George Washington Carver was intrigued with the homely peanut, and he managed to discover hundreds of inventions. In our own garden, our classes discussed the misleading appearance of a peanut and how the dry, dirty shell houses a wonderful, tasty snack. After our discussion, students explored the garden brainstorming new uses for all the plants…
Meghan, a nutrition major at California State Los Angeles, recently joined our ranks as a volunteer. Meghan contributes greatly in our ongoing war with the Bermuda grass creeping through our boxes, but her greatest contribution is the nutrition talks she gives the students whenever they taste something from the garden. Her talks span from different…
Today we harvested potatoes at King. Potatoes grow underground and we use straw and leaves to hill them to get better growth. We dug them up, washed them, and cooked them in the microwave. They were delicious and creamy, even without toppings.
Let’s Talk Strawberries at Aspire!
The long awaited strawberry season has arrived, giving Aspire students a sweet experience! We talked about all the prep work that was involved in producing these wonderful garden treats; early planting, removing early flowers to develop the roots and amending the soil. Removing pill bugs and sow bugs from the strawberry garden bed and putting…
I was so excited to see these signs that the Advanced Art class is finishing up for the garden! Most still have to put the names of the birds on, since as you can see they’ve been putting careful work into depicting the birds markings and creating visually appealing signs. These are made out of…
Since the students have been studying pollination at Weemes, we took the time this week to learn more about our special pollinator friends, the honeybees. We talked about the complex hive democracy that honeybees use and how they work together to find nectar and make honey. Since honey bees can’t talk, they communicate with a…
On Tuesday March 6th, VBGC members made HUMMUS!! I brought along with me many ingredients, the canned garbanzo beans, tahini, spices, and of course a food processor. The members learned what ingredients and how much goes for a little small batch of hummus. Members enjoyed it so much, that they didn’t leave without writing down…
Plenty of helping hands doing some spring cleaning at Dominguez, before we harvest and prepare a quick in-class snack! We are doing well, keeping our stone fruit trees happy while they spring back up. We love seeing the volunteer fennel pop up by the compost bin. It’s magic when chamomile pops up after 3 months…
The students have been asking where seeds come from and how they are made, so this week we went investigating! I helped point our classes in the right direction, but telling them that flowers make seeds, but they had to figure out how that happened. Each student got a flower and we dissected it to…
St. Patrick’s School retuned this week after a Spring Break and had we had our work cut out for us. There was much weeding to do and lots to harvest. The upper grades worked hard weeding and harvesting peas from our three massive pea vines. They beat the heat with cucumbers, tajin and hummus.…
On Tuesday March 6th, it was all about greens! First, we planted some seedlings that were green, celery and lettuce. Then together we made a nice green salad with greens from the garden, some sorrel and lettuce. Students also learned some of the nutrients that greens contain, like fiber and calcium! -Ranger Cindy
As the seasons change, we are starting a lot of new seeds, so this week we took some time to understand exactly how a seed starts growing. Our classes grew sprouts in the classroom and observed the process. Then, when we gathered in the garden, we dissected a few seeds to see the tiny embryo…
They said, “No way!! You can’t eat that flower Mr. Y” And I said CHOMP! Edible flowers are very nutrient dense and are a great value, combining beauty and edibility. Nasturtiums weren’t as much of a hit as our former taste test edible: Lemon Sorrel. But some of the kids really dug the spice and…
The Kindergarten classes at Weemes are studying the four seasons, so to celebrate the first day of Spring we talked about the different plants that grow in each season. While our broccoli and cauliflower plants are nearing the end of their growing season, an exciting new fruit has started bearing- strawberries! So our snack that…
The primary grades at Mayberry are very good at making compost. They know the right ratio of browns to greens, they add water and spin the tumblers every chance they get…BUT, what happens when you have a full heavy load of compost? You feed your garden, of course! And the students at Mayberry…