With a mission to create opportunities for kids to play, learn, and grow through gardening, KidsGardening supports educators and families with grant funding, original educational resources, inspiration, and community to get more kids learning through the garden.
KidsGardening Grant Opportunities
KidsGardening currently offers three grant opportunities to new and existing youth garden programs. After you review their grant programs below to see which one might be the best fit for your particular situation, check out the school gardens who have been awarded these grants to give you an idea of the kinds of projects that have been successfully awarded a grant as well as this Grant Writing Tips document to help you prepare a successful grant application.
Youth Garden Grant supports school and youth educational garden projects that enhance the quality of life for students and their communities with each award package consisting of a cash prize and a variety of gardening tools and supplies. This grant has been supporting youth gardening initiatives since 1982!
- GroMoreGood Grassroots Grant (brought to you by The Scotts Miracle-Gro Foundation and KidsGardening) is designed to bring the life-enhancing benefits of gardens to communities across the United States.
- Budding Botanist Grant (brought to you by the Klorane Botanical Foundation and KidsGardening) is designed to help young students learn about plants, explore their world and inspire them to take care of the life they discover in their local ecosystems.
- Little Seeds Pollinator Pals Grant (brought to you by Little Seeds and KidsGardening) is designed to support youth garden programs interested in preserving and creating pollinator habitat to help rebuild declining pollinator populations.
KidsGardening encourages anyone looking for youth garden funding to join the Kids Garden Community to explore a library of funding opportunities, including opportunities by region, and discuss fundraising strategies with a community of program leaders.
External grant opportunities
In addition to providing their own grant programs, here are samples of other grants that support youth garden programs from the Kids Gardening website:
American Heart Association Teaching Gardens works with schools to find local sponsors to help fund the installation of raised bed gardens in schools.
The Bee Grant provides honey bee observation hives to schools and receives requests on a rolling basis.
Big Green offers funding for low-income schools to install Learning Gardens in targeted locations. A list of school districts eligible to apply can be found on their website.
Bonnie Plants 3rd Grade Cabbage Program provides free mega-cabbage plants to 3rd grade teachers who want to participate so students can grow cabbages, submit pictures and measurements of their harvest to be considered for a $1,000 scholarship.
Captain Planet Foundation supports garden programs through Project Learning Garden grants that provide garden supplies and a mobile cooking cart.
Fiskars Project Orange Thumb Grants provides grants to school gardens.
Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools grant winners receive a salad bar in their cafeteria. Applications are received year round and filled as funds become available.
National Wildlife Federation Trees for Wildlife offers free native trees for restoration projects and community events planned in coordination with local NWF partners.
Nature Works Everywhere The Nature Conservancy offers grants to schools for projects that involve students in developing a nature-based, green infrastructure solution to an environmental challenge in their community including school gardens.
Seed Money is a Maine-based 501c3 nonprofit that is helping public food gardens to start and thrive by offering them grants, access to crowdfunding and technical assistance with garden planning.
Wild Ones Lorrie Otto Seeds for Education Grant offers funding and plants to schools for development of learning spaces featuring native plants and focused on environmental education.
Whole Kids Foundation Garden Grants support new or existing edible garden programs including a School Garden Grant, Extended Learning Garden Grant (for gardens not on school grounds), Honey Bee Grant, School Salad Bar Grant, Healthy Kids Innovation Grant, and Canadian Farm to School Grant.
For more information, contact KidsGardening at info@kidsgardening.org
