Grants for School Gardens

Our “Garden for Every School” vision requires a multi-faceted approach that provides several types of support for teachers, schools and gardens. The four core pieces of our strategy include: District support, garden expertise (a FoodCorps service member), school grants, and a garden educator network.

We’ll break down each of these strategies in more detail. (See our previous post on Strategy #1: Building a garden educator network.)

STRATEGY #2: Support School Garden Creation and Operations with Small Grants

Building and sustaining successful school gardens requires cash and lots of sweat equity. Unfortunately, teachers don’t have time to apply for several small grants that they have little chance of receiving. To overcome this barrier, we want to raise money for local grants to be awarded to schools and teachers right here in Central Oregon.

This fall, we’d like to offer local schools and teachers a simple application to seek funding between $500 – $1,500. This money can be used to improve a school garden, outdoor classroom or local food project – AND, to make it more sustainable.

For example, a school with garden beds might need funding to install automatic irrigation. Or a school may want to invest in a demonstration project for year-round indoor growing. Or, maybe a school has a well-loved and utilized garden, but a small stipend could go a long way in rewarding the garden champion who volunteers his/her time to make sure it stays that way.

Read more about our whole strategy here.

Make your donation to our “Garden For Every School” campaign here.