Whole Life Times: Lessons from the Garden

March 2005

Lessons from the Garden

Renowned Campanile chef and La Brea Bakery founder Nancy Silverton helps kids discover food at the source

by Kate Winchell

If ever there were a group of kids in need of the simple pleasures of sitting under an oak tree or digging fingers into the earth to plant tomato seeds, it’s the students at Twenty-Fourth Street Elementary School.

In the timeworn, Craftsman home-filled West Adams district of Los Angeles where the school is located, roughly 90 percent of the children are raised in poverty or near-poverty. Nearly all are Hispanic, and over half are English Language Learners.

The 100-year-old school hasn’t had a significant facelift since circa World War II. Acres of blacktop, bordered by the 10 Freeway, offer no shade for the 1,300 five- through 11-year-olds who attend during the height of summer due to overcrowding. And the neighborhood’s closest approximation to “open space” is the nearby Food4Less parking lot.

That’s why Nancy Silverton—renowned chef, cookbook author and former owner of the wildly successful La Brea Bakery—is dedicating herself to the Twenty-Fourth Street School’s Children’s Garden project.

Fit and petite, with a cascade of curls and a disarmingly warm and direct manner, Silverton is applying the same unwavering focus that has garnered her culinary and entrepreneurial success to growing the school project. “There comes a point in your life when it is important to become involved at some level in the community,” she says. “This is such a wonderful cause and the results are so satisfying.”

Coordinated on a volunteer basis by Emily Green, food writer for the Los Angeles Times, the Children’s Garden project has become a true community effort, with students, school staff, the parent-teacher association, district personnel and community members contributing ideas and making the project their own.

A student survey resulted in an architectural plan for the improved grounds, for which the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has agreed to “leave interesting holes in the asphalt,” as Green says. Students are getting their wish list, which includes a forest of oak trees, a California native plant garden, a planted reading maze, a soccer field and the teaching garden. A kitchen classroom will also be built to accommodate student cooking and eating. Linda Slater, a teacher at the school, is acting as liaison between the Children’s Garden volunteers and the staff, helping to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum for the project.

Both Silverton and Green were originally inspired to begin the program after seeing school gardens in action. Visiting Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard at a middle school in Berkeley, Silverton was touched by the students’ motivation. “I walked through the garden and saw the rows of boots and work gloves all lined up,” she says. “Then I went in the kitchen classroom and the children were making soup from the plants they had grown, and they were truly working as a team, all participating together.”

Reporting on school garden projects for the Times, Green has seen a lot of failures and successes. The failures all stemmed from lack of school and community buy-in, which is why the collaborative planning process is so vital to coordination efforts here. The successes she saw centered on hands-on learning. “School gardens are a powerful tool for teaching biology, math, history and English as a second language,” she explains. “Kids who prosper are those who are taught to think. In the garden, students will make many decisions about what to plant, when to plant and how to plant, making it all a part of discovery.”

Construction for the project is slated to begin in October, with the first classes taking place next spring. In addition to her fundraising efforts, Silverton looks forward to contributing to the kitchen classroom design and lesson plans.

The scope of the Children’s Garden project is ambitious; this first project will serve as a pilot program for other LAUSD schools to emulate. In keeping with that goal, a website with curricular resources for students and teachers will soon be online.

Thanks to Silverton, the Children’s Garden project has signed on La Brea Bakery as the primary corporate sponsor to carry the ongoing expenses of the kitchen garden portion of the program once the facilities are built. The new bakery owners asked Silverton if she knew of a worthy philanthropic project. At her suggestion, La Brea now operates a booth at the Santa Monica farmer’s market, with all proceeds going to the project’s operational expenses. A booth at the Hollywood farmer’s market will soon follow.

But first the school grounds must be revitalized and the gardens and kitchen classroom built. Over $1 million is still needed for the multi-year construction phase. “People are giving what they can, from the Hancock Park Garden Club to single moms who clean houses for a living,” says Green. “Every donation matters. But the real money will come from an angel or a series of angels.”

If you are a gardening angel who would like to contribute time or funds to help elementary students enjoy leafy, hands-on learning, contact Green at 323.732.4875.

Katie Winchell is a freelance writer who relishes La Brea Bakery carbs.

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