1st Place Organic Gold Award
Blackstock Montessori School
Villa Rica, Georgia

Whether they are 18 months or 8 years old, students taught under the Montessori Method first and foremost learn self-care and care of their environment. Gardening is the natural extension of a curriculum where all materials emphasize practical life applications.

Before some can even read, children at the school are hoeing, sowing, raking, weeding, watering, composting, and harvesting. Working with plants, seeds, dirt, and bugs is how they absorb facts and qualities about their world. As they mature, they research and classify the plants they are growing, the insects they encounter, and draw they connections about our impact on the natural world.

Children as young as three are intimately acquainted with the idea of compost. Before a handful trash is thrown away, children at the school learn to first consider: "Is this compost?" They know that certain kinds of trash can be walked outside, shredded, and thrown in the compost heap.

With help from volunteers such as a local Master Gardener and "compost expert," as well as a local organic farmer (who was the former president of Georgia Organics), the gardening teacher guides students in making decisions about turning, maintaining, and extracting new soil from the heap, as well as crop layout, garden design, and soil anatomy. Lesson #1 is that fertile soil is the most important piece of the gardening puzzle.

In the fall, when harvesting of the summer garden is complete, the older children pay attention to which plants grew where so they can plan ahead for crop rotation. Growing plants in different beds each season naturally breaks the cycles of weeds, insects, and diseases and keeps the soil from being depleted of key nutrients.

Heavy feeders, such as the summer corn crop, absorb a lot of nitrogen and other micronutrients from the soil. The children choose from organic fertilizers such as kelp, feather and bone meal depending on what kind of replenishment is needed. Some plots are cover cropped with crimson clover. In the spring the children will till the clover under by hand, where it becomes green manure that returns nitrogen to the soil.

In the fall, children individually choose crops to direct seed, such as lettuce mix, spinach, broccoli rabe, tat soi, and carrots. In groups, they choose which plot they will plant in, using sunlight as a guide. Together they hoe, rake, and add compost to their beds. The children utilize vermiculture by extracting worm castings from their homemade worm bin. The bin’s contents — food scraps from lunch, damp newspaper, red wigglers — provides a lesson not only in worm anatomy, life cycle, and species, but also about microorganisms in general. With a magnifying glass, children may observe other soil helpers, such as millipedes, isopods, and enchytraeids.

Once planted, rows are marked with self-made signs showing what these seeds will become, and who planted them. Mulching with raked leaves cuts down on weeds, builds the soil, retains moisture, and helps manicure the grounds around the garden. The children water the rows by hand with watering cans.

The garden itself is a cognitive structure that provides feedback to the children, allowing them to not only take ownership in successes, but also to spot their own errors — was their enough light? Was it watered each day? What was the soil like here versus here?

As spring approaches, propagation trays crowd all available windowsills. Along with the usual host of spring seedlings, students also grow native species that are disappearing due to skyrocketing development in the area. Planting swamp milkweed in the spring, for example, supports wetland ecology and attracts Monarch butterflies along their migration route.

Earth Day has been celebrated every year since the school’s inception 20 years ago. Parents and families spend the day side by side with their children in the garden preparing the beds, getting seedlings in the ground, and doing general garden maintenance. The day is completed with outdoor ceremonies and performances by the children.

Students continue the garden seamlessly throughout the summer session. Since our gardening space is limited, our yields are proportional. However, next year we are doubling in size and moving to a brand new facility that will be entirely farm-centered on 10 acres. Our goal is to not only supply our own kitchen with fresh produce, but to hold a regular market and donate actively to local missions, shelters, and food banks.

In a day and age when small farms are harder and harder to find — and vegetables are driven hundreds of miles before they reach our dinner tables — the value we hope to pass on is that when we nourish and connect with the soil in our own backyards, we in turn nourish ourselves and our community, and regain a piece of our humanity.