The Edible Schoolyard Overview
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The Edible Schoolyard is a teaching garden and kitchen where children and their families can learn how to grow healthy food and create delicious snacks and meals using fresh, local, organic ingredients. The Edible Schoolyard offers children a chance to build practical gardening and cooking skills, to connect with the natural world and to enjoy nourishing food.
The Greensboro Children's Museum has been selected to be the first children's museum in the country to have an licensed Edible Schoolyard, a program created by Alice Waters and the Chez Panisse Foundation!
The Edible Schoolyard at GCM is expected to serve as a national model for other museums and children’s institutions nationwide promoting health and wellness in young children and families.
Click the link below to watch a brief video on the Edible Schoolyard!
(Thank you to Live Oak Communications for creating this video!)
The Greensboro Children's Museum's Edible Schoolyard, is a model from the first Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, CA, created by Alice Waters and the Chez Panisse Foundation. Ms. Waters founded the Chez Panisse Foundation (1996) to transform public education through sponsoring projects such as the Edible Schoolyard and the School Lunch Initiative that integrate gardening and cooking into the core academic curriculum while ensuring that nutritious, fresh meals are available to all children at school.
The Edible Schoolyard at GCM includes a half-acre, four-season, organic garden filled with over 40 varieties of vegetables, 40 dwarf fruit trees including apricot, cherry, pear and persimmon, 30 culinary herbs, 25 medicinal herbs and 4 varieties of mushrooms. Other components include indoor and outdoor classrooms, a chicken coop housing a small flock of chickens, a pond, ramadas, arbors, a greenhouse, children's tool shed, winding natural walkways and sitting areas, a cistern, composting and recycling stations and a teaching kitchen where children and families can create recipes, cook food and share meals and conversation together.
Visit our Edible Schoolyard Blog for the latest updates.
GCM's Edible Schoolyard media coverage
Edible Schoolyard Grand Opening - May 22, 2010
What a fabulous day this was! The morning kicked off with over 500 runners and walkers participating in the Running of the Green 5K Race. Special guests, Marsha Guerrera, Director of the original Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, CA, and Francesca Vietor from The Chez Panisse Foundation, joined the visitors for the grand opening ceremony.
Melanie Soles, visionary and project leader, was honored with the naming, "Melanie's Garden" as a gift from her husband, Bill. Melanie lead the children to the entrance of the garden for the ribbon cutting as children and their families headed out to the garden to experience the magic!
Edible Schoolyard Links
Meet the Edible Schoolyard Team
Volunteer in the Edible Schoolyard
GCM's Edible Schoolyard Groundbreaking
Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, CA
CBS 60 Minutes Special on Alice Waters
For more information about the Greensboro Children's Museum's Edible Schoolyard, contact:
Betsy Grant, CEO at 336-574-2898 x301, bgrant@gcmuseum.com or
Althea Hall, Marketing Director at 336-574-2898 x306
