Urban youths learn about gardening, nutrition and giving back at Devington Green Acres Farm

By Barb Berggoetz
The Indy Star
Oct. 2, 2010

Excerpt:

Denise Smith thrust the shovel into the dry, hardened earth, over and over again.

She gingerly chopped away the dirt from around the buried sweet potatoes.

Like many inner-city youth, the 19-year-old Arlington High School senior hasn’t had much chance to experience first-hand the wonders of growing a garden and seeing hard work produce wholesome, fresh vegetables from seeds.

“I didn’t even know sweet potatoes grew underground,” she said, smiling, after helping classmates to fill a small basket with them. “I thought they grew above ground.”

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Seniors Monica Johnson (from right) and Myesha Bell, junior Timashay Hood and senior Chakena Robinson collected vegetables on Thursday in the garden outside Hogan Preparatory Academy. Photo by Garvey Scott.

One in five schools nationwide now have a garden

By Joe Robertson
The Kansas City Star
Sept. 20, 2010

Excerpt:

Hogan Preparatory Academy’s urban farmers are gathered at school, talking about why their nutritional garden is so important.

Just then, Exhibit A unwittingly passes by. It’s a fellow student.

In her hands: a bag of Cheetos Flamin’ Hot Puffs.

They know the siren song of junk food and how hard it can be to even find healthful food in their neighborhoods and in their homes. Who would have thought they could grow it themselves?

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“The garden offers a great many solutions, practical as well as philosophical, to the whole problem of eating well. My own vegetable garden is modest in scale – a densely planted patch in the front yard only about twenty feet by ten – but it yields an astonishing cornucopia of produce, so much so that during the summer months we discontinue our CSA box and buy little but fruit from the farmers’ market. And though we live on a postage-stamp city lot, there’s room enough for a couple of fruit trees too: a lemon, a fig and a persimmon. To the problem of being able to afford high-quality organic produce the garden offers the most straightforward solution: The food you grow yourself is fresher than any you can buy, and it costs nothing but an hour or two of work each week plus the price of a few packets of seed.”

Link to Michael Pollan’s website and book.