Learning Gardens Institute

Projects

Portland Public Schools

Madison Cluster Garden Collaborative (Northeast Portland)
Sites: Madison High School, Roseway Heights K-8 School, Vestal K-8 School

August, 2009 - Saturday, August 8th: Vestal had a school/community garden groundbreaking event! This followed the largest asphalt removal project in Portland history - on their playground beginning August 1. Mayor Sam Adams and lots of families and friends of the Vestal garden project gathered on a cloudy Saturday morning to remove 15,000 square feet of asphalt under the careful direction of trained volunteers from Depave. Click here to see the story in the Oregonian about the day's event.

April, 2009 - The Learning Gardens Institute is supporting Madison High School's development of a permaculture garden begun by science teacher Sue House and AmeriCorps worker Anna Gordon in 2007. Madison's initiative includes a partnership with Portland Community Gardens to create adjacent garden spaces for local families. At the same time, school garden initiatives are taking shape at two of the Madison neighborhood's K-8 schools, Roseway Heights and Vestal.

As part of its action plan, LGI is supporting an effort to develop a Madison Cluster Garden Collaborative that would forge a variety of links between Madison High School and the K-8 schools that lie within its boundaries. This partnership will hopefully include cross-age working and learning partnerships between students at the participating schools.

The Learning Gardens Institute plans to take a leading role in developing a K-12 food- and garden-based curriculum with and for classroom teachers that could be field-tested in Madison cluster schools and other interested schools in the area.