Kicking Off The Green Heart Project’s 2025-2026 Farm to School Year

September always brings a buzz 🐝 of excitement to the gardens, as it marks a crucial time for our programs: back to school. All summer we have been preparing our gardens for Fall, with help from our Summer Youth Interns, and when our students come back it brings a new sense of life and eagerness to see what’s in store for this new school year.

This year, our Farm to School programs kicked off in late August and early September, depending on the school, and it’s already promising to be a vibrant season of growth, learning, and fun.

Our 2025-2026 School Partners

For the 2025-2026 school year, we’ll be partnering with ten local schools, as well as offering field trips to our Urban Farm at Enston Home in Downtown Charleston. We believe in cultivating not just gardens, but also a deeper connection between students, their food, and the environment.

Partner Schools

This year, six of our schools are partners, which means that they will receive full-service support from Green Heart. Through routine garden care and immersive, hands-on student instruction, we’ll be engaging approximately 400 students in 220 garden and culinary lessons, accumulating an astounding 4,400 student learning hours in the garden! Our full-service partner schools are:

Charleston Catholic School
James Simons Montessori School
Mitchell Elementary School
Meeting Street Academy
Sanders-Clyde Elementary School
Sullivan’s Island Elementary School

Affiliate Schools

In addition, four Green Heart affiliate schools will receive essential support through regular garden maintenance and expert consultation from our dedicated Green Heart Advisors. Our affiliate schools are:

Burke High School
Meeting Street Elementary at Brentwood
Meeting Street Elementary at Burns
Memminger Elementary School

And the learning doesn’t stop there! This year, we’ll also be hosting 5-10 field trips to the Urban Farm at Enston Home. Students from any school are welcome to visit by bus, where our educators will lead them on a tour of our food production operation and engage them in exciting hands-on activities right on the farm.

Additional Farm-to-School Support

We’d also be remiss if we didn’t mention that none of these programs would be possible without our amazing Green Heart Buddy volunteers, who tirelessly support our Garden Educators in engaging students in the outdoor classroom. We have 25 Green Heart Buddies supporting our programs for the Fall semester, working alongside our wonderful Garden Educators, Amy and Lilly.

A Glimpse into the Garden: Highlights from Our First Lessons!

As we jump into the fall semester, we already have some fun lessons under our belt. A few of our favorite lessons so far have included:

“Movin’ and Growing Like a Seed!” – Planting Carrots with Kindergarteners

Kindergarten students at Mitchell Elementary kicked off the year by “Movin’ and Growing like a seed” as they explored what plants need to thrive. Students learned about the essential elements for plant growth and mastered the “Plant Dance,” a student favorite where they start by squatting down like tiny seeds and use body movement to replicate the motions of spreading roots into the ground, sending up their stems (their spines!), and sprouting leaves to catch the sun.

After learning and dancing, each student got a turn to carefully plant a carrot seed into the soil and pinch the dirt closed around their seed, sending their seeds positive energy with a gentle “good luck little buddy!” While some groups planted, others learned about garden spacing. Our students explored how carrots need “three inches of personal space” to grow big and strong, just like we sometimes need space ourselves!

Respect in the Garden: Reviewing our Core Value

Our “Rules of Respect” are fundamental to our garden community: Respect Yourself, Respect Your Buddies, and Respect the Earth. Students from James Simons focused on our rules of respect, discussing how these rules not only show up in the garden but also in their everyday lives.

Our conversation about respect brought up the topic of respecting each other’s personal space, which was the perfect transition into talking about plant space, one of the five basic needs for plants (along with sunlight, water, air, and nutrients). We used drawings to illustrate these needs, emphasizing the importance of space.

Then, we introduced the concept of square foot gardening with life-size grid drawings and templates. Students learned how templates help ensure each plant has enough room to grow without fighting for resources. And they planted carrots and beets with a special attention to their specific spacing needs.

Compost Critters and Potato Planting

Another group of students from James Simons dug into the world of compost and were tasked with planting potatoes! We started by exploring the four main ingredients in compost: “Browns” (dead leaves, woodchips), “Greens” (food scraps, coffee grounds), Water, and Air.

Then, our students met the compost “chefs” – the FBIs! Fungi (like mold and mushrooms), Bacteria (the invisible workers creating heat), and Invertebrates (creatures without spines, like beetles and earthworms). Students became mini-investigators, searching for signs of mold, feeling the warmth of the compost, and eagerly looking for worms and other critters in our active compost piles..

In groups, students rotated between activities. One group excitedly planted potatoes, carefully placing them with sprouts upright in their new garden beds. Other groups explored different compost bins, drawing their findings and even creating their own “recipes” for successful compost. We also had a fun sorting game, categorizing items as trash, recyclable, or compostable, and a compost word search to reinforce their new vocabulary.

Let Good Things Grow This School Year

We’re only a few weeks in and we’re already excited to see what else this year holds! If you’re interested in learning more about our programs and seeing live-time updates, make sure to follow us on Instagram.

And, importantly, our programs thrive thanks to the generous individual donations from people like you! Please consider joining us in supporting outdoor, hands-on education in the garden for Charleston’s students this school year. Your support makes all the difference!

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