April is National Garden Month, an opportunity to celebrate gardening’s physical and mental health benefits. It also provides educators with several opportunities to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 3, which aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages. One recent report shows that school gardens lead to significant increases in vegetable consumption and an increase students’ interest in growing food for personal use.
Typically, we think of gardens as open spaces for growing fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Unfortunately, this model doesn’t work for many schools due to outdoor space restrictions, a lack of time to manage a garden, and the growing time of plants not always matching school calendars. Luckily, there are several alternative growing methods you can use to share gardening with your students.
Consider some of these options for creating alternative garden spaces that work well in most classrooms:
Windowsill Gardens
As the name implies, windowsill gardens consist of indoor collections of plants. This type of garden offers excellent flexibility for classrooms because gardeners can adapt the size of containers and types of plants to different situations. Because the garden is inside the school, students can easily monitor growth and learn how to care for plants through daily observation. Check out this informative article to learn more about the benefits of a classroom garden, find tips for getting started, and listen to the School Gardens with Ease Podcast.
Mobile Cart Gardens
Planting gardens in mobile carts offers another flexible option for creating a garden without ample outdoor space. These carts allow users to move their gardens indoors or to a different area on campus if necessary. Consider using children’s wagons, wheelbarrows, or planters on wheels as the container for your garden; you can source many of these containers through donations from school families. See this strategy in action! This sixth-grade class learned about gardening, nutrition, and career pathways by participating in a 12-week workshop where they grew kale, mint, and snap peas in wheelbarrow gardens.
Hydroponic Gardens
Several methods exist for introducing hydroponic gardening into the classroom. Some use hydroponic growing systems, while others require commonly found materials like milk cartons. This type of gardening integrates many different topics, including how to grow plants in less-than-optimal conditions, how to decrease the impact of weather and climate on gardening, and how to use natural resources more efficiently. Although hydroponic growing systems may be expensive, try reaching out to your community to ask if someone has an unused system to donate. Many communities have “Buy Nothing” groups on Facebook—try posting in your local group to ask if someone has a system available to donate to your classroom. This document shares information on the basics of hydroponic gardening, lesson plans for hands-on learning, and construction plans for simple hydroponic setups.
Tips for Starting Your Classroom Garden
- Start small. To engage students in your gardening activities, begin with fast-growing plants such as beans or lettuce. Germination is easy: Place seeds in a ziplock bag with a damp paper towel and plant the new sprout in potting soil. Continue watching and nurturing plant growth throughout the growing cycle. Connect your lessons on seeds and plants to SDG 3 and discuss the importance of healthy living for the world’s population as your plants grow.
- Create a schedule. Include student ideas when creating a schedule for caring for and monitoring your classroom garden. Assigning jobs encourages students to invest fully in their role as caretakers of the garden or plants. Sample job titles include planting coordinator, watering specialist, maintenance technician, harvest manager, data recorder, and document specialist. Use an AI tool such as Claude (reviewed here) to ask for additional ideas and descriptions for each title.
- Find an expert. Ask fellow teachers, parents, and friends to guide you and your students in your gardening adventure. Many communities have an agriculture office; contact your local office to ask for an expert to visit your classroom and share growing tips.
- Document and share. To fully appreciate the growth in your garden, it’s important to document the progress and share the results with students and families. This documentation allows you and your students to celebrate their accomplishments and learn from unsuccessful attempts. Book Creator (reviewed here) is an excellent tool for documenting and sharing your garden. Add pages weekly to share images, student journals, videos, and more and create a digital book that students can view and share at any time. Don’t forget to share student reflections about SDG 3 and the goal of promoting healthy lives and well-being.
When you integrate gardening into your classroom, you’re not just growing plants and teaching a science lesson. You’re also nurturing students’ understanding of Sustainable Development Goal 3 and helping them see how individual actions can contribute to healthier lives and communities. Whether you choose a windowsill garden, a mobile cart, or a hydroponic system, don’t miss the opportunity to add a garden to your classroom lessons during National Garden Month in April.
Do you have tips to share with our readers on how to grow successful gardens in the classroom? We would love for you to share your ideas with our community of educators!
