Starting a Community or School Garden Workshop
If your project is just starting or at the idea stage, this is the ideal time to take this workshop. It is offered quarterly. Visit the Classes Calendar.
Affiliate Garden Network
Join our affiliate garden network to receive support for your school garden through quarterly HUB distribution of plants, horticulture knowledge sharing and scholarships to our basic gardening classes.
Professional Development
We are an approved Texas State Board of Education Certification (SBEC) CPE provider. We offer Edible Academy teacher workshops each Fall, Spring and Summer for a three-day Academy.
Visiting Garden Educator Residency
Urban Harvest Youth Education offers a Visiting Garden Educator Residency to provide ongoing classroom training and support to classroom teachers. The aim of the program is to develop sustainability and to enhance school-wide usage of the school community garden.
Teachers and their students participate in integrated Texas Essential Knowledge Skills (TEKS) garden lessons and demonstrations presented by an UHI Garden Educator. The Garden Educator also serves as a mentor to the classroom teachers and collaborates with them to model and demonstrate how to optimally utilize the school garden.
Past participants found the program to be a great tool for integrating TEKS standards and to be a worthwhile and enjoyable experience for both the teachers and students:
“Our class enjoyed the program so much. We had a planting lesson, and planted bush beans. They were a phenomenal success! They grew and made a lot of beans. The students were so excited as we watched the growing process, supplemented by our plant unit in the room. We watched the plants grow from two leafed plants to multi-leaf, flower, and then make the “fruit”, the beans. We harvested and then counted all the beans into sets of 10. We had enough . . . to send home beans for every child”
– Kindergarten Teacher
After School Gardening Provider
Classes held during the after-school time are led by a UHI Garden Educator who conducts hands-on lessons in life skills and core subjects while helping students have fun “playing in the dirt.” We partner with existing after-school programs.
School gardens may include vegetable, herb, fruit or habitat gardens and ponds. We work with schools that currently have gardens, as well as those who wish to plant new ones. Through the After School Gardening Program, we work with your school or site to build or renovate the garden with students as project based learning. With planning, the garden can be used as a multi-disciplinary learning tool throughout the school day by teachers as well as during the After School Gardening Program.
Tell us more about the organization you represent and Apply to become a School Partner: Click Here.