Directory of Gardens
Cedarbrook Elementary School Garden
| Location | Spring Branch, northwest Houston outside the loop |
| Main Purpose | Educating students at Cedarbrook |
| Established | 1995 |
| To Visit or to Volunteer | Contact Irv Robbins or Miguel Villareal - call Urban Harvest for contact info |
The garden at Cedar Brook Elementary School, near Hammerly and Bingle in Spring Branch, was started in 1995 shortly after the school, one of the newest in the Spring Branch Independent School District, opened. Amparo Makridis was then Coordinator of CIS (Communities in Schools) at Cedar Brook. She recruited a group of parents who built raised beds in an area set aside near the playground, and started planting tomatoes and peppers for the parents' use. These parents, in this mostly transient area with hundreds of apartments, have moved on. Currently, parental participation is limited to special occasions like prior to school opening in August for a "garden cleanup".
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In the fall of 1996, Amparo became a first grade teacher, and she
continued to bring her classes out to the garden. In the spring of 1997, after completing Dr. Bob Randall's first Organic Vegetable Gardening Specialty Course, Irv Robbins was asked to be the Garden Advisor at the school. In March 2000, Miguel Villarreal, a Master Gardener and graduate of the 1999 Organic Vegetable Specialty Course, came aboard as co-advisor to the garden. Together they conduct six or more "Outdoor Classroom" sessions of 30 to 45 minutes per week. These are scheduled with interested teachers and changed each semester and season.
Each class is assigned from one to four of the 18 raised beds depending upon age groups. These beds are mostly 4' X 8'. The children do all the gardening under our supervision and reap all the rewards. Teachers help maintain decorum and are given information, i.e. pages from Mark Cotham's book, "School and Youth Vegetable Gardening in the Greater Houston Area". The teachers use it in their classrooms as they wish.
The emphasis is on "kid friendly" crops. The children always want tomatoes, peppers, beans and carrots, but never shy away from planting and picking everything from broccoli to squash. The yearly contest to find and pick the first cucumber usually coincides with the last garden Club session of the spring. One of the most fun-filled events has been the digging up of sweet potatoes prior to the Thanksgiving Holiday recess. In the fall of 1999 a Houston Chronicle photographer recorded this.
The Cedar Brook Elementary CIS usually hosts a six-week summer program that includes students from several other area schools. There is a tie-in with two early morning gardening classes weekly. A highlight of this session occurs in early July on the last day of the session, when the teachers and children pick the corn, boil it and eat it on site.
The future for this garden looks good. The Spring Branch ISD recently upgraded the security fence. The Cedar Brook PTA applied for a grant from the SBISD Education Foundation to update the garden irrigation system. This was recently installed. This garden can serve both as a helpful oasis in a desert of asphalt and concrete and as a supplier of nurturing food.
The garden would appreciate volunteers at its annual cleanup in early September. Also, the garden would welcome donations of compost, hay and seedlings.
