Tower Gardens

Edible school gardens provide students with the opportunity to explore food through experiential learning. Food exploration supports the development of a positive relationship with food while also expanding youth’s knowledge of many curricular areas.

Gardening enhances the school environment by creating learning opportunities that differ from the traditional academic environment. Mastery of gardening skills and garden-related successes can create feelings of empowerment, and belonging, among students. School gardens provide leadership opportunities for students in senior grades to mentor younger students by teaching them how to care for and maintain the garden. Nurturing plants fosters lessons based on empathy and care which can be transferred to children’s interactions with one another. The connection to nature formed through gardening supports positive mental health.

Food connects people in many ways – to self-identity, family traditions, cultures, communities, friends, memories, and the world around us. Edible gardens create a space for students to share and learn about others’ food and cultural traditions.

Involving students in seed selection for edible gardens can foster cultural inclusion in classrooms. Discussions about foods used in traditional cooking at home can help determine which vegetables and herbs the class is interested in growing in the garden.

Consider working backwards when selecting seeds – decide on a dish that the classroom would like to prepare and taste, and then write down all the ingredients that can be grown in the school garden. Try to include as many garden-grown ingredients as possible while considering school food preparation capacity.

Knowing where to start may feel overwhelming for new tower garden users.

Learn more about how to use tower gardens, including set-up, planting, harvesting, maintenance, and semi-annual cleaning though short videos on Tower Garden’s YouTube Channel.

Good Food Machine offers online courses about using tower gardens in school and community settings. Each course takes about 20 minutes to complete. Good Food Machine also has a comprehensive Guide for Teachers & Educators that is great for learning about tower gardens and troubleshooting any challenges you may encounter.

School Gardening Grants

Many gardening grants support the purchase of tower gardens for schools. If you require assistance with a garden grant application, please reach out to us at healthyeating@swpublichealth.ca.

Grant Opportunities:

• President’s Choice Children’s Charity – Powerful Kids Grow & Cook Grant 
• Whole Kids Foundation Garden Grant Program  
• Whole Kids Foundation Bee Grants  
• Nutrients For Life Learning Garden Grant 
• TD Friends of the Environment Foundation Grant   

Evidence

Klemmer, C. D., Waliczek, T. M., & Zajicek, J. M. (2005). Growing Minds: The Effect of a School Gardening Program on the Science Achievement of Elementary Students. HortTechnology, 12(3), 448-452. https://doi.org/10.21273/HORTTECH.15.3.0448  

Ohly, H., Gentry, S., Wigglesworth, R., Bethel, A., Lovell, R., & Garside, R. (2016). A systematic review of the health and well-bring impacts of school gardening: synthesis of quantitative and qualitative evidence. BMC Public Health, 16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-2941-0  

• Children’s Garden of the Senses: Ontario Curriculum Connections Kindergarten and Grades, 1, 2 and 3
• 101 Ways to Connect Learning to the Garden
• The Edible Schoolyard Project Lesson Plans – Many lesson plans complement tower gardens and food education. Some lesson plans are specific to outdoor gardening but can be adapted for tower gardens.
• Common Ground: The Strawberry Project Handbook – BC program with activities linked to gardening, food, and Indigenous cultures. Some activities can be incorporated into tower garden programming but may require modifications.
• Bright Bites: Green Thumb Badge – Edible Gardens

• Measure growth rates of plants.
• Explore patterns and display results on different types of charts and graphs.
  
• Explore the logarithmic scale in relation to pH.

• Create a vocabulary wall to record and display garden tower terminology.
• Create recipes using foods grown in the tower garden and have students write a procedure to prepare their recipe. Teach Food First (BC) has a lesson plan with activities for Recipe Exploration.
• Start a pen pal program (Plant Pals) by connecting with another local classroom with a tower garden and matching students up to write to each other. Plan activities to complete and act as prompts for letters. Classes can grow the same plants, or different. Choosing plants to grow based on food and cultural traditions provides a great opportunity to share traditions across schools, learning from pen pal peers.
• Keep daily garden journals tracking observations in the garden such as plant changes and classroom activities.
• Write a poem or other narrative to describe experiences visiting the tower garden and exploring using five senses.
• Create a garden-themed alphabet book. Select edible plants that begin with each letter of the alphabet and have students write and illustrate their own books.

• Investigate the functions of different plant structures.
• Explore the pH scale and discuss the optimal range for fruit and vegetable growth in the tower garden.
• Plant seeds in the tower garden and in soil at the same time and compare their growth.
• Try a Food is Science lesson plan to incorporate food literacy with Ontario’s Science and Technology Curriculum into tower garden programming.
• Pair tower garden introduction with Teach Food First’s (BC) Exploring Where Food Comes from lesson plan and activities.
• Learn about how food is grown and produced through Virtual Food & Farm Field Trips (Farm & Food Care Ontario).
• Explore Agriculture Curriculum Linked Resources (Agriculture in the Classroom Canada), including information resources, activities, lesson and unit plans, and more.
• Take Business of Food for Educators Courses (AgScape) which are free for education professionals, teachers, and teacher candidates. 

• Use the five senses to explore vegetables and herbs growing in the tower garden,
  
• Reflect upon the importance of eating with others by having students complete “The People I Like to Eat With” activity by Teach Food First (BC).
• Prepare a recipe together using vegetables grown in the tower garden and eat together. Have students complete the “Today I Tasted” worksheet. Select a recipe with age-appropriate cooking skills.
• Discuss and complete an activity on mindful eating.
• Use vegetables and herbs grown in the tower garden in a Let’s Get Cookin’ Program

• Create drawings in daily garden journal to depict observations in the garden such as plant changes.
• Create paintings or drawings of vegetables and herbs growing in the tower garden.
• Create a collage using pictures of plants from seed catalogues.
• Make a time-lapse film of a plant growing using a movie camera with single-frame capability.
• Create a food product to market, including creating a label (hand drawn or designed graphically on a computer) and create and/or record a video or social media advertisement for the product.

Social Science

• Trace the path of a fruit or vegetable from the field to the table.
• Identify activities related to having a garden or farm and identify everyone who contributes to these jobs in your community.
  
• Identify the environmental impacts of food waste and identify how food is wasted at each part of the supply chain. Explore Love Food Hate Waste to learn how to reduce avoidable household food waste.
• Learn about seed saving and heirloom crops. Many local libraries have seed libraries to save seeds in communities. 
• Discuss the importance of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to food supply.