So you had the great idea to start a school garden club and you got permission from your school administration…now what?
Here are a few questions to consider to help you get started.
What is the purpose of your school garden club?
- Is your club for enrichment purposes or are you going to align it with a class and curriculum?
- Is it open to all students or only certain grade levels?
How will the club be funded?
- Will there be a fee to sign up for the club?
- Will the school provide funds?
- Will the club need to fundraise to pay for itself?
Further reading: Resource page: Financing Your School Garden: msgn.org/resources/financing/
Who is going to run the school garden club?
- Behind every successful school garden is a dedicated team of individuals willing to make a commitment to planning, planting and maintaining it. See if you can entice a mix of people including teachers, parents and community members to share responsibilities.
- Figure out a regular meeting time and an easy way to keep in touch that works for your group. Do you want to have online meetings, work days or meet for coffee?
- Plan when to have students join the club and use your garden space.
- Design a simple outline of what you want to accomplish with a monthly timeline.
- Then as you get the club rolling, keep updating the outline and timeline to see what did and didn’t work. Next year you will be glad you did!
Further reading: Forming a Garden Committee from Kids Gardening.
How often will you meet and when?
- Don’t feel like you have to have everything perfect before you start…gardening is full of inspiration and setbacks. Share them with the students and learn together!
- Is there an after school program at your school that you can plug into to get started?
- Do you want the club to meet weekly or biweekly after school? DUring the school year, part of the year or in the summer?
- Does combining the school garden club with a class make sense?
Further reading: Sustaining Your Program from Kids Gardening
Where can you go for information and inspiration?
- Attend MSGN events and programs such as Maine School Garden Day, School Garden Summer Tours and our Annual Meeting to learn and stay inspired.
- Sign up for our monthly newsletter to keep inspired and connected.
Further reading: Check out our website MSGN.org and review our Resource pages for Teaching, Managing, FInancing and Cooking in Your School Gardens. Read the School Garden of the Month profiles for inspiration and ideas.
More Information
For more information, check out our Monthly School Garden Checklist on our Managing Your School Garden resource page. Organized by month, each section provides a checklist for planning and tasks needed to be done on a seasonal basis for success in a school garden.
