Learning space & time, inside & outdoors

by Valaree Logan

What a year it has been! I couldn’t be more grateful for the growth, support, and challenges I’ve experienced during this year of launching the regenerative garden at the Restoration and Wellness Center. We started with an idea of what we hoped the garden space would look like and feel like for every student, teacher, administrator, community member, and neighbor who came into the space. With sustained Intention, the program created space and time that centered around student needs and interests.

One of the biggest challenges for me was starting the program months before we actually broke ground on our garden beds. How to ensure that our garden-to-come would be at the center of our activities and lessons? In planning curriculum, we came up with ways students could practice the skills and experiences they’d need to care for a regenerative school garden: mindfulness exercises helped us learn how to be intentionally present; using all five senses outdoors helped us make observations of living and nonliving things; practicing kindness and patience helped us nurture a willingness to try new things; learning how to create time and space away from cell phones helped us focus on one thing at a time.

Thanks to hands-on experiments with microgreens, self-guided painting classes, preparing and eating meals together, starting plants from seed, building and tending a worm compost system, making the garden signs, and so many other projects, we were always preparing for (or responding to) two of the most exciting weeks of the school year: groundbreaking week in the fall and planting time in the spring. One important thing I learned from the students this year was what happens when you remain persistent and resilient throughout the process of learning, and practice something new almost daily. In addition to projects, our class discussions helped us understand more deeply the issues and challenges my students face. What does it mean, I asked them, to be in the here and now, when the here and now is not necessarily where we might want to be?

After winter break, as we began to distance ourselves from our phones and moved toward intentional monotasking, we became producers and not just consumers. Students showed up, and were willing to try growing their own food. As we ebbed and flowed together, they began to understand and practice ways of interacting across our individual differences. This allowed us to work through conflict in more restorative ways. It allowed them to push themselves to set up their own success. Personally, I learned that we learn most when we’re able to use ourselves and the environment around us to teach and grow ourselves and our understanding of our space and time here. Though we experienced some challenging circumstances this year, we pushed through and became gardeners, researchers, and scientists. What students learned within the garden would travel with them beyond the garden.

I use the word “we” because this was not at all possible by my own hands alone. I am grateful for the opportunity to have launched this program, and for everyone at Restoration and Wellness, especially Tim Merritt and Alex Meyer. How we show up and what we do affects us all and the students we serve. We are all growing!

Lead gardener & school liaison Valaree Logan shares highlights from the 2022-23 school year