The Garden 

The Edible Schoolyard garden is a thriving acre of land on school grounds that serves as an interactive garden classroom for students at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California. 

In the spring of 1995, an abandoned lot adjacent to the school was designated as the garden site. Landscape architects, chefs, gardeners, and teachers were invited to share their vision of a garden where students would participate in hands-on learning. 12 years later, the acre of land is lush with seasonal vegetables, herbs, vines, berries, flowers, and fruit trees.

King Middle School teachers and the garden staff work together to link garden experiences with students’ science lessons for truly integrated experiential learning. The garden is carefully planned to grow a wide variety of seasonal produce that favors the Bay Area climate; it shifts and changes from season to season, as we seed, grow, harvest, and rotate crops with new groups of students each year.

Students harvest and prepare produce as part of their garden and kitchen classes. However, produce grown in the garden is not used for school lunch. Learn more about the impact of this program and its connection to school lunch reform at the Chez Panisse Foundation website.

Get a firsthand glimpse of the Edible Schoolyard garden.  Take Video Tour

New in the Garden!

After months of hard work, we are proud to unveil our new Rainwater Catchment System, with a 6,000 gallon capacity. For every inch of rain, we harvest and store 200 gallons of water, and limit the contamination of our Codornices Creek Watershed and the San Francisco Bay. This hands-on, educational tool is illustrating issues of stormwater runoff, pollution, erosion, and providing a real world application of core mathematical concepts.  This project was made possible with support from the Alameda Countywide Clean Water Program.

Read the Edible Schoolyard Journal to learn about our daily work!