Join our Santa Cruz Area School Garden Google Group

Do you have an abundance of succulent cuttings to share? Wondering what the best variety of persimmon tree to plant in a small space? Want to share a successful event you had in the garden?

This is the place to communicate with other area school garden teachers. Ask questions, share resources or ideas, stay tuned for grant announcements or plant give aways.

Join our network by visiting the Santa Cruz County School Gardeners Google Group

You need a google account to join. Sign in with your google account and then click Join Group.

Tell us About Your Garden / Connect with Other Area Garden Teachers

The truth is most of us are the only garden teacher at our school. There is so much to gain from visiting other garden educators to see their programming in action.

Fill out this form to share about your garden and your program strengths & needs.

See who else has shared and look for times to connect with a garden teacher at their garden or just reach out and say hi.

K-2 NGSS in the Garden Curriculum, free for Santa Cruz County Educators.

Email kelsey@lifelab.org for Free Download Code.

These units are designed to engage students in Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Science and Engineering Practices in order to investigate and discover key ideas from grade-level NGSS Disciplinary Core Ideas and Crosscutting Concepts. 

These lessons were created for, and piloted with Life Lab Partner Schools in Pajaro Valley Unified School District Gardens. These are available as a free download for Santa Cruz County Educators at the Life Lab Store. 

Learn Learn more about this curriculum. 

You also might enjoy these free 11x17 inch NGSS Science and Engineering Practices Posters to remind you and your science-activated students what it means to "practice" science. Find them on the bottom of this page www.lifelab.org/content-standards.

Free Seeds and Plants 

Renee's Garden Seeds provides Life Lab with loads of end of season seeds to give away to garden educators. Come to a networking meeting or connect with Jennifer at  gardener@lifelab.org to arrange a pick up.

For years the UCSC Farm gives away thousands of annual (and sometimes perennial) plants at the end of their annual spring plant sales. Come on Sunday of the plant sale at 1:30 with a donation appreciation letter from your school. Plants are given away at the end of the plant sale at 2:00. 

Join our forum to receive announcements about free plants.

Garden Classroom Workshops - 

Since the early 1980's Life Lab has inspired tens of thousands of educators through garden-based training. Garden educators from around the world join us for Life Lab Garden Classroom Workshops.

Workshops include a Life Lab publication, a tasty lunch, and the opportunity to learn with garden-educators from across the nation. 

Continual education credit is available for $80 per unit per day.

View our upcoming workshops in the Garden Classroom located on the UCSC Farm

PVUSD Educators connect with alyssa@lifelab.orgfor discount codes.

LOSD and SCCS District Educators connect with geoff@lifelab.org for discount codes.

Life Lab maintains the following list of good sites to find grants suitable for school gardens. There are many to sort through and additional resources related to grant writing and funding school gardens.

Most school garden grants are awarded in the range of $500-$3,000. Here are some favorite local and national grant resources to consider:

Whole Kids Foundation School Garden Grants – these may be applied to multiple times. This is a more detailed and complex grant application compared to others.

California Fertilizer Foundation – two grant cycles per year

CA Foundation for Ag in the Classroom – frequent cycles of awards, they have one grant offering that focuses on organic gardening overseen by Santa Cruz based CCOF!

Big Creek Lumber – Garden bed grants and donation requests. These are specific to schools in Big Creek Lumber Store communities, like Santa Cruz County!

Ocean Guardian Grants – up to $4,000 for projects that enhance coastal environments. Many grant recipients have partner with Groundswell Ecology on native planting projects.

Schools Plus Grant is run by the Public Schools Foundation of Santa Cruz County

There are more free garden lessons on-line than aphids on the underside of an old kale leaf. The trick is locating them. We’ve got you covered, and I am not talking about aphid poo.

The Life Lab School Garden Resources is a great resource to browse easy to do lessons and activities. Use the search function to browse Lessons & Activities.

Finding & Sequencing High Quality Lessons Life Lab runs the School Garden Support Organization Leadership Institute and from this work we have organized a great collection of Promising Practices related to garden lesson resources.  You might get lost reviewing all that is there so here is the direct link to the list of online lessons.

GreenSchoolYards America has extensive resources related to teaching outdoors. Here you will find loads of suggested outdoor teaching resources  these are part of a more comprehensive collection of teaching and learning resources.

Life Lab Store

What could be better than binging on Netflix while on a treadmill or spin-bike? Watching a webinar on garden-based learning of course!

Browse webinars Life Lab staff have presented over the years and check out the SGSO Network Webinar Series we help facilitate. 

Find resources related caring for gardens at our School Garden Resources.

Our Mediterranean climate allows for year-round gardening and we are lucky to have the UCSC Farm & Garden sharing gardening tips. Browse their collection of For the Gardener Tip Sheets.

Cover Crops for the Home Garden and Orchard

The UCSC Farm & Garden has an ever expanding collection of video resources. See them on the CASFS Youtube Channel

We have songs, lessons and more. Click around at www.youtube.com/lifelabgarden

Many of our recent videos were created by our educators to be more kid focused. These could work especially well to preview an activity in your class before going out to the garden.

While this isn’t exactly a video we just want to give a shout out to Santa Cruz’s own Banana Slug String Band. Stream their Signing in the Garden or Pollinator Nation songs with your students in the garden.