ne day, Alice Waters was walking to her restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, when she passed a vacant lot next to the nearby Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. The
Over the course of the next three decades, Rouse says that The Edible Schoolyard Project’s curriculum has evolved to continue to serve the students at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School and beyond. Today, she says the program incorporates gardening and food sourcing into just about every aspect of education. “We work in collaboration with the school to determine what their scope and sequence is for the year,” she says. “Then, we work backwards from that to create lesson blocks that will intersect that with the topics that we’re trying to cover, which might be climate change, regenerative agriculture, composting, circular economy, or biodiversity.” Outside the incubator of The Edible Schoolyard Project’s flagship school (and open-minded, health-conscious Berkeley, which has provided a welcoming environment for this type of education), Rouse believes that the landscape for food education in public schools nationwide is moving in a positive direction. “There’s now a national school garden movement,” she says. “I don’t think that’s going away.” While the students at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School continue to tend to their flourishing garden and
prolific chef and author — whose restaurant is widely credited with ushering in the farm-to-table movement — mused to a friend that the lot could be used as a place to grow fresh produce for the students. Their conversation eventually found its way to the middle school’s principal, who agreed to grant Waters access to the lot. If the availability of fresh, healthy food in public schools is lacking today, in 1995, it was nearly unheard of. But Waters — being ahead of her time — understood this, and so she planted a garden full of crops for children at the school to nourish and grow under the guidance of teachers and volunteers. Soon, the students became stewards of the land, spending dedicated class time and free periods tending to their crops. When it was time to harvest, they brought their bounty into a kitchen classroom, where they learned to make seasonal recipes using the ingredients they had grown. And just like that, The Edible Schoolyard Project was born. In founding the nonprofit organization, Waters brought much of the same ethos that she used at upscale Chez Panisse to the students at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, which remains The Edible Schoolyard Project’s flagship school today. In the 29 years since it was founded, the organization has expanded considerably, establishing a second Edible Schoolyard in Stockton, California, in 2021, and a network of thousands of schools around the U.S. and the world that have embraced teaching students about growing fresh produce through educational programs. When the program started at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, volunteer-led gardening lessons were conducted in a way that spoke to the students (between sixth to eighth grade) on their level. Cooking classes were made palatable to their budding tastes, as they learned to make seasonal salads, frittatas, and veggie-filled pestos in their kitchen classroom. “At Chez Panisse, the chefs are creating these beautiful plate experiences for guests, and we think of that as edible education,” Ashley Rouse, The Edible Schoolyard Project’s executive director, tells The Rooted Journal. “What’s on their plate is seasonal, it’s coming directly from a farmer, and it’s being presented in its clearest, purest way. We think of that as the same way we do edible education at the school.”
The future of farming depends on engaging our youth to be stewards of the land through flagship programs like Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard.
prepare seasonal meals, The Edible Schoolyard Project also empowers educators well outside of Berkeley to start gardening programs. “We’ve inspired over 6,500 schools around the globe, across 57 countries,” Rouse says, adding that Waters often carries a map pinpointing all the schools they’ve reached with their programming. Through free educational resources and their “edible
education curricula” (which includes lessons like “Understanding Organic” and “Cooking with Curiosity”), teachers can incorporate The Edible Schoolyard Project’s values into their classrooms regardless of their geographic location. “We teach kids about nourishment,” Rouse says. “We teach them about what this food does for your body, that it’s better for you because you’re planting it and growing it in organic soil, that it’s been created through regenerative practices.” She adds that their education doesn’t end there, and extends to how the food is prepared and presented, as they learn about “the witty banter that can happen between tables as they’re prepping, what it takes to set the table with intention, and think about beauty as the language of care.” Ultimately, Rouse says, “It’s really about understanding how we’re all connected, and doing that through food.”
From the outset, the teachers at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School genuinely believed in The Edible Schoolyard program and helped to
by Amy Roberts illustrations by Peter Oumanski
seamlessly integrate gardening and cooking lessons into the curriculum — a factor that has no doubt contributed to the organization’s success. “In the beginning, the teachers were highly involved in the support of the classroom integration,” says Rouse. “Their teaching staff worked in collaboration with our teaching staff.”
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