4-in-1 School Gardens: Feed, Teach, Beautify, and Wildlife

School gardens can be so much more than a place to grow food. They can transform into vibrant, multifunctional spaces that engage students, attract wildlife, and beautify the campus. By designing gardens with a holistic approach, teachers can create environments that serve diverse roles while feeding the students’ curiosity, creativity, and appreciation for nature. Here’s how a well-thought-out school garden can be more than just a place for planting.

1. Food Gardens: Feeding Bodies and Minds

At their core, school gardens are meant to provide fresh food, teaching students where their food comes from and how it’s grown. This hands-on experience with planting and harvesting can be easily connected to various curriculum subjects like science, math, and language arts, making the garden a natural outdoor learning station.

By incorporating these gardens into classroom learning, teachers can create an interactive setting that reinforces academic concepts while providing practical life skills. When students take ownership of their garden, they also develop responsibility and a sense of achievement, as they watch their efforts flourish into tangible results.

2. Attracting Wildlife: The Power of Biodiversity

A school garden designed with biodiversity in mind becomes a mini ecosystem. Gardens that avoid monocultures (like rows of only one crop) and instead include companion planting with a variety of plants—food, flowers, and herbs—attract beneficial insects and wildlife. Marigolds, nasturtiums, and other edible flowers add vibrant colors and appeal to pollinators like bees and butterflies, which are essential to the garden’s health and productivity.

When students witness the variety of life their garden supports, from worms to ladybugs, they learn how wildlife contributes to a thriving ecosystem. These experiences teach them to respect and collaborate with nature, an essential lesson in today’s environmentally conscious world.

3. Adding Beauty and Creativity: Gardens as Art Spaces

Gardens have the potential to be beautiful, inviting spaces that inspire creativity. By designing garden beds with curves instead of rigid rectangles, teachers can mimic the natural shapes found in ecosystems, like ocean waves, winding rivers, and spiraling mandalas. In a permaculture-inspired design, “edge” (the interface between different elements) plays a role in creating diversity, life, and visual appeal.

Incorporating color and form through plant selection and garden layout, a garden becomes a place where students can express themselves and find a peaceful, aesthetically pleasing environment. This connection to natural beauty helps students develop an appreciation for art and design as it appears in nature.

4. Outdoor Learning Stations: Engaging Lessons Beyond the Classroom

An outdoor garden isn’t just a place to grow plants—it’s a place to grow ideas and lessons. By incorporating hands-on gardening projects into lesson plans, teachers can make the garden a powerful extension of the classroom. Students engage in active learning, discovering the science of plant growth, observing the pollination process, and even learning math through tasks like spacing seeds or measuring plant heights.

Even without designated spaces like mud kitchens or makerspaces, a school garden used for regular lessons can be a unique learning station where academic subjects come alive. This approach helps students gain practical knowledge in a dynamic environment, reinforcing concepts in a memorable way.

The Benefits of Permaculture Principles

The Oasis garden programs are heavily influenced by permaculture principles, which emphasize using each garden element for multiple purposes. Plants are chosen not only for food production but also for their roles in providing shade, shelter, and habitat. For example, a single native fruit tree doesn’t just provide food but also serves as shade, a shelter for insects and birds, and a natural insect attractor.

This approach—selecting plants that perform multiple roles—builds a sustainable garden where all parts of the system support each other, creating a self-sustaining, eco-friendly environment that teaches students the value of working with nature. 

Creating a garden that serves as a food source, wildlife habitat, artistic inspiration, and learning station is a powerful way to show students that nature is a friend and teacher. By exploring these multi-functional possibilities, educators can build gardens that enrich the school environment in more ways than one, while fostering environmental awareness and respect in the next generation.

For teachers interested in diving deeper into this approach, the School Gardens with Ease podcast offers more insights on creating gardens that serve a multitude of purposes.