Our Vision in Action

When we started planning the Garden Classroom, a bit over ten years ago, we envisioned days like this one. We have many days like this throughout the year, but on May 20th I kept my camera on hand as I worked with a group of community leaders from Mexico and Central America. The shots are what I caught going on around us as we shared lessons, harvested, and double dug.

These visitors were participating in a program of the Community Agroecoloy Network and returned to their home countries to start and strengthen community gardens.

It was great to see one of Life Lab's "Food, What?!" Youth Interns interested in sharing about the "Food, What?!" program in Spanish to the visitors. And all the while school field trips were making plant science and organic agriculture come alive to local school kids.

Life Lab's year round educational programs for pre-schoolers through high-schoolers and educator professional development fills one niche of the larger UCSC CASFS Farm, which for over 40 years has been teaching others about organic gardening and sustainable farming.Just one small 25 acre patch of well cared for land making lasting impressions.