Garden School Foundation

From handmade kites to soaring flights, 24th Street Seed to Table students are celebrating the end of the school year with creativity and laughter! How are you preparing for summer break? 🪁 🦋 ☀️

Are you passionate about sustainability and outdoor education? Garden School Foundation (GSF) is hiring a full-time Site Lead to join our team! As a GSF Site Lead, you’ll lead Seed to Table garden and nutritional cooking classes, tend an organic, edible school garden, and oversee compost program operations. Applications are now open through June 15th, 2026. 🌱

Our school garden at Rockdale Elementary has been a treasured source of green space for the school community since 2013, and we are proud to support LAUSD’s recent efforts to green the campus further as part of their Sustainable Environment Enhancement Development for Schools (SEEDS) program.🌳

In collaboration with the Rockdale PTA, Garden Educator Ms. Janelle has supported the planning process this school year. With every new collaboration, our gardens become resilient through connection and collective care, bringing us one step closer to a greener future. 🍃

Our students are cooking up more than delicious snacks! As they mix and chop their way through each recipe, they learn the origins and cultural history of every dish along the way. 🌎

Recently, fifth graders created their own twist on dolmas by stuffing garden-fresh spinach leaves with herbed brown rice, cheese, dried cranberries, and tzatziki. With 60 recipes, each Seed to Table cooking class is a new adventure in cooking and culture. 🍽️

Beneficial microbes keep our gardens thriving!🔬

They are central to Korean Natural Farming (KNF), an environmentally friendly agricultural approach that relies on naturally occurring microorganisms to build soil health and reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers.

Using everyday ingredients like rice, fruit, and spices, growers create fermented solutions that introduce beneficial microbes back into the soil to enhance plant growth and resilience. 24th Street Garden Educator Teacher Perren created these fermentations made from different fruits! 🍎

Incorporating techniques like KNF into our school gardens allow us to experiment and learn alongside students. By using lots of different gardening techniques, we create more sustainable growing spaces while introducing students to the diverse agricultural traditions that have shaped how communities around the world grow food. 🌍

For more than two decades, GSF has been teaching kids to grow, cook, and compost at public schools in Los Angeles. We are proud to work alongside our communities to nurture a healthy and mindful generation of children who care for their bodies, their communities, and the earth. 🌱🍇🌎

Today, we celebrate California Nonprofits Day and the collective impact nonprofits like GSF make every single day. To honor this special occasion, consider supporting GSF or your favorite nonprofit with a gift or volunteer time. Check out our stories to learn more about other local nonprofits doing great work throughout Los Angeles. Together we make change possible! 💪

Working collaboratively with each of our partner school sites allows us to dig deeper and make a bigger impact. This year Garden Educator Ms. Sarah has been supporting the Climate Action Club at 99th Street Elementary, helping to teach students about the environment through STEM activities like pH testing garden soil. 🧪

The club also recently reimagined how an underused area of campus could be transformed into a green space for learning and gathering. Together with the club’s students and a group of volunteers, we installed raised beds with native plants, a trellis for vines, a free reading library, and more. 📚 🌱 🌼

“What is great about the club is that it connects the Seed to Table program to climate change explicitly,” said Ms. Sarah. “It allows kids to practice being scientists.” Combined with Seed to Table classes, the Climate Action Club empowers students to see themselves as active participants in creating a more sustainable future. 🌎

Over the past month we’ve been sharing all about the Cafeteria to Compost program and our exciting USDA Compost grant we received in partnership with LAUSD Food Services and . We’re proud to share that this work was also featured in the recently published Impact Report for the 2024-2025 school year! Through our ongoing partnership with the District, we’ve been able to achieve incredible milestones in sustainability education and food waste reduction. ♻️

Florence Simpson, Deputy Director of Nutrition Services at LAUSD, was also recently tapped by to speak about our work in their Good Food For All Webinar series. You can tune into the webinar recording at youtube.com/LAFoodPolicyCouncil to learn more about our partnership! 🫜🥦🫛

We’d love to see you at Community Garden Day at Wilshire Crest Elementary on Saturday, May 30th! The D line extension takes you right around the corner to the brand new stop at Wilshire / La Brea, making it easier than ever to get to the garden!

Join us to help maintain our production farm rows, plant new summer seedlings, and spend some relaxing time in the garden. 🍅

For more info and to RSVP, email us at [email protected]. 🌱