Workshop for Our Congolese Neighbors
It was an honor to spend time with our Congolese neighbors at Flowerland in Wyoming as we shared our love of gardening and provided insights into growing in our climate (Grow Zone 6) as opposed to their region (Grow Zone 12).
Let’s Talk About Seeds!
We love teaching students where their food comes from. Did you know that a dormant seed contains everything that it needs to grow into a plant and grow food to eat? This month students learns the parts of a seed and then each was given a seed that had been soaked in water to awaken […]
We had a Workshop
On Saturday, March 11, we hosted a Rengenerative Garden Workshop at Flowerland in Wyoming, MI. Hope Gardens’ staff taught community members how to install their own no-till, regenerative (nature-based) garden. Regenerative gardening is an approach to sustainable food and farming systems that regenerates topsoil and enhances biodiversity now and long into the future. This practice […]
Kids Learn About Pollination and Beekeeping
4th-grade students at Grandville South Elementary learned the importance of pollinators as they examined flower parts under magnifying glasses and bee parts under microscopes. One student told our staff he was excited to use a microscope for the first time! Student volunteers tried on a beekeeper’s suit and helped demonstrate how to care for bees. […]
March Garden Tips!
Now that the weather is starting to get warmer, this is a good time to revisit your garden and start getting your supplies and areas ready for your transplants! Make sure you have enough tools and gloves and clean up any fallen debris and garden messes you have been pushing off all winter! Eliminating hibernating […]
February is a Good Month for Garden Planning
. Kids in 39 Wyoming Public Schools STEAM Â classrooms, 7 Team 21 after-school programs, 2 classrooms at South Elementary in Grandville, and 4 classrooms at Countryside Elementary in Byron Center, all planned their summer gardens in February. They began by learning why planting a variety of fruits and vegetables helps protect the garden from being […]
February Garden Tips
February’s tips come from our fabulous garden tech, Jake Torok. Get your supplies ready! Seed starting is just around the corner. Start looking at your seed packets and taking note of which ones need to be started in order to be able to be transplanted outside as soon as their tolerance allows! Peppers, thyme, and […]
Variety-The Spice of Life
In January we brought ‘Variety…The Spice of Life’ to 39 Wyoming Public School STEM classrooms. Students learned how eating a variety of colors of fruits and vegetables gives us a variety of the vitamins and minerals that make our bodies strong and healthy. We use MyPlate, which was created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, […]
Gardening in January in west Michigan? Yes!
This month we installed a regenerative, no-till school garden at Godfrey Early Childhood Center in Wyoming. We were greeted with sunshine as we engaged in the process of covering the ground with cardboard, paper, leaves, and mulch. Soon a blanket of snow will cover the layers causing them to break down and create a […]
Is it Dirt or is it Soil?
This month 850 students at 3 Wyoming schools learned that “soil” is the scientific name for the ground in their school garden. They discovered that soil has both living (organisms, decaying matter. air and water) and non-living (clay, sand, silt) parts and that it is the living parts that add important nutrients to our food. […]