This website explores the organizations and ideas on the forefront
of the garden-based learning and food literacy movement in urban communities
with special attention to momentum at the grassroots.

A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness;
it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. – Gertrude Jekyll ¹

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Enthusiasm for garden-based learning and food literacy for youth in urban communities presents a complex, emerging, and popular source of community activism. Communities and schools rally around gardens and food literacy initiatives as they bring together broad reaching concerns that go far beyond the garden and food themselves. Activists and community members start gardens or programs with diverse motives including: whole-student learning, hands-on learning, community building in schools, addressing obesity, environmental education, environmental justice, increasing green spaces, eliminating food deserts, food awareness, and more.² While some schools and communities have just adopted fresh-food kitchens, others have built gardens, and others yet interconnect the two with farm to table programs. Though some schools have the infrastructure for these programs on school ground with teachers, other initiatives opt for programs after school, in the summers, or on community grounds.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. –Cicero³

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