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“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” 1x, 10x’s, 100’s, How many times do I think this in a week alone? This saying sums up my mentality towards everything in life right now. For this blog, it applies to the sliver of my life I’m devoting to a handful of elementary students and my school garden. 

I’m here because I feel that through the different elementary schools I’ve been a part of, the gardens consistently go to the weeds, aaand maybe stay there for awhile (we won’t add up the time). Is this reasonably familiar? I’m here to blog my way through my experimental ideas and strategies to rehab my school’s garden using small consistency and believing our slow, sure-footed steps will give us our results “fast.” In garden terms, that can be one year!  

Gardens take time which is undoubtedly a reason teachers, some of the thinnest spread professionals in the world, let nature have it back. I will share my rehab ideas with you over this next year, as I, a full time elementary teacher endeavor to perk this space up. Some ideas I’ll bring to this site are: 

• A journal logging what kind of progress can be made and maintained without sacrificing weekends and late afternoons.
• The management of a simple devoted school club for the garden which I call our “Farm to Table Club” 
• Ways to involve all the grade levels (Pre-k – 5th)
• Guest I’ve found for our garden 
• And certainly, online resources and guides that could be helpful.

I suppose my draw to the garden is honestly because of my own childhood environment. Both my parents grew up on farms and carried their habits into suburbia while they raised me. I still had full exposure to their homesteads and currently maintain an active interest in my Dad’s home place. I’ll share under my personal blog posts some photos and moments from that loved space. 

The biggest reoccuring theme I predict on my pages will be resourcefulness. This was modeled often by my dad and is a favorite quality of mine to find in people. The creativity in it is something I’ve always admired. I may do and share things from my school garden through my blogs that are repeatable, however, sometimes they will be ideas individual to the resources I have at hand. Resourcefulness is a frame of mind to take on so you too can look around and find what can work for you and your space. I hope you find inspiration here for your own bit of creative thinking. As you create and work within your project space, please share out and collaborate on Instagram with like minded people #schoolgardens, #kidsgardens, and #farmtotableteacher!  

I hope to have you along my journey this next year to share in all the highs and surprises that come along with rehabbing my school’s garden.