Schoolteacher Lynn Hyndman always found it hard to leave school. And after retiring from decades of teaching at the Dawes Elementary School in Evanston, she still couldn’t walk away. Inspired by Alice Waters’s Edible Schoolyard project in Berkeley, California, Lynn took on the monumental job of building an edible garden for her former community of Dawes students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Four years later the garden on school grounds is a thriving success, and a source of beauty, tranquility, pedagogical inspiration, and good food.

Here, in Lynn’s words:

Garden Fever

Spring was not yet in the air when on a sunny February morning I stopped by the school where I volunteer as the edible school garden project coordinator. “Will you be in the garden today?” “Are you here to garden?” The inquiries came tumbling out as I navigated the corridors.

The garden is much beloved by the children who flock there in warmer weather, eager to be put to work. Turning the compost, spreading mulch, weeding – any job will do if they can work with the garden tools and hang out with their friends. Against a backdrop of banter, bickering, and babble, they touch on all manner of subjects while they work. Fifth graders even hatched a plan over a raised bed to challenge the “no costumes” rule on Halloween and decided to circulate a petition to overturn it. They succeeded.

When the idea of helping create an edible garden occurred to me, I never imagined such positive fallout as this. Inspired by the Slow Food in the Schools Projects I was captivated by the idea of teaching children about good eating through gardening. Never mind that I knew little about vegetable gardening. After all, I had enjoyed teaching for 36 years because it offered the possibility to always be learning. So along with the children, I am learning – about cool season crops and warm season crops, about how to grow potatoes, about the beauty of an okra blossom, and what to do with kohlrabi.

Lessons are simple but powerful and offer children opportunities to interact with each other and their environment as they plant, care for and harvest the food. Together with the children and their teachers, we deepen our understanding of how good food begins with the soil, that if the soil is healthy, we’ll be healthier. We see how important team work is in growing food. We are continually awed by what the Earth provides. We are reminded to be in appreciation of all those involved in getting food to our table. And whether old or young, a first time visitor to the garden or returning, we will continue to be amazed at how a small taste of fresh garden salad has the capacity to transform our palate and open our minds to new taste experiences.

Heading out of the school one winter day, I met up with a kindergarten class in the hallway waving animatedly to me. ‘Hi . . . . (pause, trying to remember), Hi Salad!”, one child blurted out and, then, embarrassed, he scurried along. It’s my middle name now.