[Seed Savers Network <info@seedsavers.net>]

New Book on School Food Gardens Published

15 August 2007
Want to establish a food garden in a school? Here is the book for you.

Do you think children's eating habits are deteriorating? That there is
a crisis in health due to poor diet? That the general level of
gardening skills is degenerating?

To address these problems there is a growing movement to establish food
gardens in schools. To service that interest, Seed Savers has just
published a ninety page book, Seed to Seed Food Gardens in Schools.

The book is written by Jude Fanton, co-founder of Seed Savers, and Jo
Immig, an environmental scientist and co-ordinator of the National
Toxics Network who has written several books including the "The Toxic
Playground" and "Safer Solutions" which detail how to avoid of
hazardous chemicals and better safeguard children's health from
environmental pollution.

The production of the book was supported by the Mercy Foundation in
Sydney and grew out of the establishment of a food garden at Byron Bay
Public School. Photos of that process illustrate the book, along with
amusing black and white drawings throughout.

Chapters include planning the garden, planting, maintaining, harvesting
and saving seeds. It is written in a clear and informative style with
many ideas for lessons and activities. Resources listed include books,
organisations and websites that cover a wide range of aspects of
gardening.

Extract from the Introduction:

Gardening can be a magical experience for children. They love to help
out and delight at ripening berries, blooming sunflowers, and gathering
up lemons for lemonade.
Most adults can recall happy times spent in the garden when young,
learning how to plant seeds and stake tomatoes, an experience often
shared with our parents and grand parents. Many of us remember the
exquisite taste of homegrown food, in contrast to the bland taste of
many supermarket fruits and vegetables today.
Unfortunately, with the trend towards shrinking backyards and
increasingly busy lives, domestic food gardens have become "a thing of
the past". The opportunity to pass on important gardening skills from
generation to generation and to share in the joys of homegrown food is
being lost.
For children without a vegetable patch, or even a fruit tree, there's
little opportunity to observe how food grows. They may only ever see
fruit and vegetables at the supermarket where they come neatly
packaged, bear little resemblance to the whole plant and may be sold
outside the normal growing season.
Schools are excellent places for creating food gardens as they often
have more space than homes. As "outside classrooms", school food
gardens can be used for a range of activities across all curricula.
They provide a great opportunity for physical exercise and hands-on,
experiential learning.
Seed to Seed Food Gardens in Schools hopes to inspire a rebirth of food
gardens so children will be able to enjoy gardening and growing their
own food and their own seed for the next season.

The 90 page A4 shaped book is available from our home page free as a
downloadable coloured pdf and as a black and white book for $20 post
paid within Australia from Seed Savers. Contact info@seedsavers.net, or
phone 02 6685 7560, 9am to 5pm


This article can be found on the Web at:

http://seedsavers.communityfoods.com.au//news/1187173717_19875.jsp
	
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