In 1994, chef Alice Waters and King Middle School Principal Neil Smith collaborated with teachers and community members to begin the process of planning the Edible Schoolyard (ESY). Planning commenced in 1995, and, two years later, more than an acre of asphalt was cleared and cover crop was planted. In 1997, the school’s unused 1930s cafeteria kitchen was refurbished to house the kitchen classroom.

The following timeline of program highlights details our growth from a parking lot to a nationally recognized program. Today, the program is integrated into the middle school's daily life: the organic garden is flourishing, plants feed and outgrow the adolescents who nurtured them, and the kitchen is filled with delicious smells, music, and enthusiastic young chefs.

Program Highlights

1994-1995: Getting Started
1995-1996: Education
1996-1997: Digging In
1997-1998: Putting It All Together
1998-1999: Growing
1999-2000: Fruition
2000-2001: Sending Out Seeds
2001-2002: Sprouting New Shoots
2002-2003: Growing Roots
2003-2004: Bearing Fruit
2004-2005: Taking Initiative
2005-2006: Leadership
2006-2007: Harvest
2007-2008: Branching Out

Program Highlights

1994-1995: Getting Started

• A vision of the future garden is shared at a symposium composed of chefs, teachers, gardeners, landscape architects, businesses, school administrators, and community craftsmen.
• The mission statement is developed.
• A fundraising benefit and Mexican feast is held with a slide show by pioneering farmer, author, and photographer Michael Ableman.
• The first adobe oven is built.
• The first after-school cooking class is offered to King Middle School students.

1995-1996: Education

• The steering committee is formed.
• Vermiculture and recycling programs are initiated.
• Staff development includes visits to local gardens and to Green Gulch Farm.
• Produce is delivered from Terra Firma Farm in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes for cooking classes.
• The sixth grade classes prepare food twice a month in their classrooms.
• The first cover crop of bell beans, fenugreek, crimson clover, oats, and two vetches are planted to cleanse and improve the soil.
• The first Edible Schoolyard Summer Program is offered.

1996-1997: Digging In

• Sixth grade classes work in the garden three times monthly and seventh grade classes once each month.
• A Kitchen Warming event celebrates the opening of the renovated kitchen classroom.
• Every King Middle School student attends two kitchen classes in the spring.
• Terra Firma CSA boxes continue to be used in the kitchen classroom.
• The Center for Ecoliteracy awards ESY a Curriculum Development Grant to provide two garden “mentor teachers."
• The kitchen prepares meals from the garden's crop of mache, arugula, mustards, lettuces, kale, bok choi, carrots, turnips, beets, garlic, fava beans, and potatoes.

1997-1998: Putting It All Together

• Sixth and seventh grade classes go to the garden twice each week.
• In the fall, seventh grade classes are in the kitchen three times each month.
• Volunteers construct a permanent shade structure called the Ramada from tree cuttings in the garden.
• King Middle School students, supervised by a local artist, construct a tool shed using a sustainably harvested redwood tree.
• Chefs, designers, teachers, and architects attend the Kitchen and Cafeteria Design Charrette to share visions of the future King Middle School school lunch program with staff from ESY.
• The garden's notable plantings are citrus trees, apples, plums, ground cherries, black currants, hazelnuts, figs, raspberries, edible bamboo, sweet bay, kiwi, scarlet runner beans, chocolate vine, hibiscus, jasmine, passionflower, and chayote.

1998-1999: Growing

• Alice Waters receives an Excellence in Education award from California Senator Barbara Boxer and a U.S. Department of Education Educational Heroes award from U.S. Secretary of Education Richard C. Riley.
• Two ongoing Americorps positions are created and staffed through a partnership with the Bay Area Youth Agency Consortium.
• A new composting system of interconnected steel-framed cubes is implemented, speeding the soil creation process.
• The apple espalier is constructed and planted with eleven trees grafted at ESY.
• A propagation table is constructed for seedling flats.
• King Middle School students particularly enjoy the garden's crops of corn, blackberries, lemon verbena, mint, gourds, tomatoes, onions, leeks, peppers, basil, broccoli, and collard greens.

1999-2000: Fruition

• Berkeley Unified School District adopts a Food Policy that emphasizes organically grown produce in the district lunch program.
• Delaine Eastin, State Superintendent of Public Instruction visits ESY, and, as a result, founds the statewide project, a Garden in Every School.
• Wendy Johnson of Green Gulch Farm begins consulting and working with the garden staff.
• A tradition is established of grilling fresh corn in the garden for incoming sixth graders.
• The lower orchard is planted with apple trees.
• The new plantings this year are pear trees, asparagus, loquat, chives, mulberries, grapes, cape gooseberries, peas, pole beans, and bush beans, all of which are prepared and enjoyed in the kitchen classroom.

2000-2001: Sending Out Seeds

• Students and garden staff plant a new herb garden that includes medicinal, tea, and culinary herbs.
• EdibleSchoolyard.org goes online.
• Students create wreaths from garden materials and harvest vegetables with the garden staff for a Holiday Wreath Sale and Produce Giveaway.
• ESY collaborates with BUSD Nutrition Services to offer a school-wide, free, healthy breakfast during statewide SAT9 testing week. Nearly 400 students eat organic breakfasts each day, including hot vegetable soup, macaroni and cheese, and oatmeal.
• Apple, plum, and pear trees grafted in the garden are donated to other local school and community gardens.

2001-2002: Sprouting New Shoots

• The kitchen classroom is relocated to a building adjoining the garden. Designers and craftspeople refurbish the space and transform a temporary classroom into a beautiful working kitchen.
• ESY and the Center for Ecoliteracy collaborate on a pilot all-day workshop for local garden and kitchen educators, held at King Middle School.
• The garden's newest additions are four Aracana and Rhode Island Red chicks, raised by an after-school class and garden teachers, and named Cous Cous, Henrietta, Safari, and Busy.
• A coop is constructed to house the hens, who are each producing a daily egg by October.
• Students and staff rebuild the outdoor oven and prepare the first pizzas during the 2002 Summer Program.
• Young olive trees are planted around the garden's perimeter.

2002-2003: Growing Roots

• 600 King Middle School students make pizzas in the outdoor oven.
• A benefit premiere of the PBS American Masters film, “Alice Waters and Her Delicious Revolution,” is hosted by the Chez Panisse Foundation to support construction of a greenhouse in the garden.
• Nearly 40 California educators visit ESY through the statewide LEAF (Linking Education and Fitness) grant.
• Grains from the garden are prepared and eaten in kitchen lessons about staple foods in world history, including wheat, barley, corn, amaranth, quinoa, millet, and flax.

2003-2004: Bearing Fruit

• The Ramada, the garden’s central “classroom,” is rebuilt with help from students and the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center.
• Research studies are undertaken at King Middle School by faculty and students at the UC Berkeley Department of Education and the UC Berkeley Department of Natural Resources.
• Students from UC Berkeley’s Biology Scholars program volunteer and mentor students in the garden. Former King Middle School students return from Berkeley High to volunteer in the garden and kitchen.
• King Middle School sixth grade students and teachers participate in the ESY Seed-to-Table Immersion Project, spending two days of intensive learning and community building in the garden and kitchen, including the lunch hour, piloting the incorporation of lunch into the instructional day to support CA Content Standards.
• A local craftsman and King Middle School students build a chicken tractor using recycled materials.
• Local organizations The Aquatic Outreach Institute and the UC Botanical Garden hold weekend and summer garden teacher trainings at ESY. Nearly 1,000 local, national, and international visitors come to the garden and kitchen. Most are educators and parents starting similar projects. Visitors include California First Lady Maria Shriver and California State Secretary of Agriculture A.G. Kawamura.
• The garden’s fruit trees bear substantial crops, including enough Seville oranges for marmalade, and kiwis, a student favorite. Other notably successful crops include 300 pounds of winter squash and 13 varieties of heirloom shelling beans.

2004-2005: Taking Initiative

• In June 2004, the Berkeley Unified School District School Board enters a partnership with the Chez Panisse Foundation, the Center for Ecoliteracy, and Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, officially launching the School Lunch Initiative.
• ESY merges with the Chez Panisse Foundation, and becomes a fully funded program of the Foundation.
• Construction begins on the King Middle School Dining Commons, designed to engage students and link the lessons of the kitchen and garden classroom to school lunch. Construction is documented by students in King Middle School’s Eastlab technology class.
• The School Lunch Initiative offers four all-day workshops for garden, kitchen, and classroom teachers district-wide to begin rethinking school lunch.
• Students and teachers at King Middle School form a “Kids for Slow Food Club.”
• The Smithsonian Folklife Festival highlights ESY in a two-week exhibit on the National Mall in Washington DC, staffed by ESY and attended by more than one million visitors.
• Alice Waters hosts lunches at the Folklife Festival to foster legislative and governmental support of the School Lunch Initiative. The lunches are attended by senators, members of Congress, chefs, and philanthropists.
• During the summer months, ESY garden provides produce to the Berkeley Family Clinic, Richmond Senior Center, and the People’s Grocery.

2005-2006: Leadership

• Ann Cooper becomes Berkeley Unified School District’s Director of Nutrition Services, implementing healthy changes in food served to students district-wide.
• Jonathon Kozol, author of Savage Inequalities, speaks at King Middle School at a benefit event for the School Lunch Initiative.
• The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall visit ESY.
• ESY holds its first four-week intensive summer program, “Farm to Fork: Food Justice.”
• Sixth grade teachers elect to develop and implement an integrated curriculum in 2006-2007 in support of the School Lunch Initiative, named The Sixth Grade School Lunch Initiative Pilot.
• Eric Schlosser launches the book tour for his latest book, Chew on This, with his first-ever student assembly at King Middle School.
• Under the guidance of a new Executive Director, the Chez Panisse Foundation establishes its first affiliate program, ESY NOLA at the Samuel J. Green School in New Orleans.

2006-2007: Harvest

• King Middle School gets Universal Breakfast. All sixth grade teachers take their students to breakfast on a regularly scheduled day each week.
• ESY staff participates in district-wide staff development trainings for BUSD food service personnel, garden educators, and cooking instructors.
• Students and staff harvest 1,059 pounds of vegetables, 300 ears of corn, and 289 eggs in the ESY garden, including more than 30 varieties of heirloom tomato seedlings grown from seeds saved from last fall’s tomato harvest.
• A reading class brings the ‘Jazz Café’ into the ESY kitchen to explore reading and history through music and writing and reciting their poems.
• In the ESY garden, sixth grade students “Traveled to Mesopotamia.” Life-altering innovations such as the development of tools, houses, irrigation, and domestication of plants and animals were explored through hands-on garden activities linking classroom curriculum to the garden.
• King Middle School students create an original stage adaptation of Seedfolks, a play based on the novel by Paul Fleishman, as part of an integrated humanities core unit related to the School Lunch Initiative.

2007-2008: Branching Out

• As part of their food preservation studies, 8th grade students harvest and preserve tomatoes, and make and preserve pesto.
• Paul Fleischman, author of Seedfolks, speaks at a 6^th grade student assembly as part of the SLI pilot.
• Family Writing Night is held in the kitchen. Parents join students to craft and compose valentines, read poetry, and munch on delicious snacks.
• Classroom teachers new to King are learning about cooking, gardening, and where food comes from along with their students.
• Esther travels to Berkeley’s sister city Sakai in February, to participate in a symposium on the Edible Schoolyard.
• Students participate in all aspects of introducing spawn to cultivate shiitake, oyster, and portabello mushrooms. 30 pounds of oyster mushrooms are harvested and prepared with students.
• Students plant tea beds – new to the garden this year. In addition to the children’s favorite lemon verbena, you will find chocolate mint, orange bergamot, and lemon balm.
• All 6^th grade students studying ancient civilizations go on an Egypt Walk, participating in hands-on activities that demonstrate Nile River flooding, pyramid building, and grinding of grain.
• A wheelchair-accessible bed is added to the north end of the garden.
• Gutters directing rain water into two barrels are added to the tool shed this winter. Hoses connected to the barrels carry water to irrigate the lower orchard.
• A dozen students take a crafty gardeners after school class. Students make lavender wands; garden herb lip balm, cloved oranges, and Andy Goldsworthy-inspired garden sculptures.
• A grant from Newman’s Own funds construction of much-needed soil storage bins.