For a new project we’re launching at GOOD, Casey, Beth and I got to visit an amazing school garden with the LAUSD’s green policy director Mud Baron (at right). Yes, that’s his real name. Theresa Dahl, in white, is a mom and garden goddess at Carthay Center Elementary, and gave us a tour of the garden that was a sea of asphalt only a few years ago.
With the help of volunteers, the school built several raised beds where just about everything you can imagine is growing. Compost was donated from local supermarkets. We had some awesome spicy mustard greens that tasted like wasabi.
The students learn to grow plants from seed, transplanting the seedlings into bigger and bigger containers until they’re ready for the ground.
This is part of a papaya grove where all the trees were grown from a single papaya that got tossed into a compost heap.
Here are some peach blossoms in the fruit orchard, where a retired maintenance worker takes care of the trees, making sure they’re appropriately pruned.
Theresa said the students were outside learning about life cycle when a mouse ran out of the compost heap and started nibbling on a strawberry, only to have a hawk swoop out from the sky and pluck the mouse from the garden. You can’t teach that in the classroom, folks!
I’ll write more soon about what we’re planning over at GOOD, but until then, I’ll leave you with some good advice from one of the students.
