City Schoolyard Garden

City Schoolyard Garden is a non-profit organization in the City of Charlottesville that manages educational schoolyard gardens at six city elementary schools, as well as the City Schoolyard Garden at Buford at Buford Middle School. CSG helps to develop garden-based curriculum for elementary and middle schools.

Schoolyard Gardens

• Burnley-Moran Elementary School
• Clark Elementary School
• Greenbrier Elementary School
• Jackson-Via Elementary School
• Johnson Elementary School
• Venable Elementary School
• Buford Middle School

History

City Schoolyard Garden (CSG) emerged in 2010 out of a community desire to have gardens in Charlottesville City Schools. Founded by Linda Winecoff, a group of interested gardeners and community members established and built the Buford Schoolyard Garden Project at Buford Middle School that spring and began integrating the garden into the school's daily life. In the fall of 2012, after two successful seasons, the Charlottesville City School Board was interested in integrating a garden into each of the city's six elementary schools and they looked to CSG to help form this vision into a reality. A group of interested community members, teachers, gardeners, and landscape architects formed the CSG Elementary School Strategic Planning Committee and began building or expanding gardens in each elementary school. During this time, they found that each elementary school possessed a unique identity, a varied level of resources, interest, and internal support for garden-based programming. They also found that each school had its own garden history -- some with well-established gardens, others with past gardens, and others without any history of gardening at all. As it grew and built these gardens, CSG formed an active and engaged board, hired a garden educator at Buford Middle School and an executive direct, and created a structure of contracting and paying one or two interested parents or school community members from each school to integrate the gardens into the school's curriculum and to maintain the gardens as CSG garden coordinators. In 2014, CSG is became an independent non-profit organization. CSG relies on the financial support of individual, businesses, and foundations.

Mission

City Schoolyard Garden cultivates academic achievement, health, environmental stewardship, and community engagement through garden-based, experiential learning in Charlottesville City Schools.

Projects

Each school has a unique garden that is used in a variety of ways by teachers and students.

External Links

• Official Site
• Clark School Garden Blog