Special Recognition Award
Valley Vista Elementary
Petaluma, California

We have a wonderful garden here at Valley Vista School. Let us tell you about it! Our garden is 5000 square feet full of flowers, vegetables, and other exquisite plants. All students participate in the garden at least every other week. Upper grade students spend 50 or more minutes each week cooking, weeding, planting, watering, harvesting, and doing other educational activities. Let us tell you more about Valley Vista’s lovely garden.

At Valley Vista, the students are the biggest part of the garden. When we first started the garden, the students got to design how we wanted the garden to look. Many of our ideas are now being used. After we saw how we were going to design the garden, then we started building it. Lots of parents, students, and community members sheet mulched the space between two wings to form our garden. We built our outside canopy and fixed both of our tool sheds that we use to store things and do activities. Students even volunteer at events where we can tell people about our garden.

Every day students from kindergarten to sixth grade help to maintain the garden. We water, seed, weed, harvest, transplant, and compost. To keep our garden healthy, we use wood chips on top of the soil to keep the water in the ground and the weeds from coming up. All the kids grab the watering buckets and go to plants that need water. We pull weeds by the roots. We know to compress the soil around seeds so they sprout faster. We have corn food trays for our hot lunches, which we put in the compost pile along with other food and garden stuff. We are going to be starting with worms soon, also. We never spray our plants with pesticides. Over the summer, Valley Vista families take care of the garden. Our garden has stayed very healthy and beautiful because of all the work we do and the help we get from parents and the community.

Other than working to maintain the garden, we do activities to learn many other things. Our garden coordinator, Miss Vanessa, chooses the lessons she teaches with other classroom teachers and volunteers. While working in the garden, we learn how plants reproduce, about photosynthesis, the life cycle of a plant, and how plants use water to produce food. We learn which plants are okay to eat, which ones need sun or shade, and how much to water. We cook and learn proper nutrition. We also do writing and art activities.

Our garden is run by grants and fundraisers. We have plant and bulb sales that help to pay for our garden coordinator, Vanessa Passarelli. We have a Harvest Fair before Halloween where we paint and decorate pumpkins, toss beanbag fish, have a ring toss, string beans for necklaces, and bob for apples on strings. In May, we have a party and make flower fairies, dance around a pole, decorate cookies with edible flowers and eat from the garden to celebrate.

At Valley Vista School, we have a very tasty salad bar every Tuesday. The salad bar is made up of mostly fruits and vegetables we have grown from our garden, which are all organic. Other foods come from farms that we have partnerships with. Every week we serve a delicious special to go along with the salad. A favorite of students is hash browns. Also on Wednesdays after school, there is a sale of fruits, vegetables, and bread, which is partly donated by a local bakery. Many parents buy these delicious foods while waiting for their children. Valley Vista harvests great food all year.

Without the support of our community members, we wouldn’t have our wonderful garden or Miss Vanessa.