The Outdoor Classrooms Summit: Gardens that Feed

The concept for the 2020 Outdoor Classrooms Summit is to bring The Seeds of Inspiration for Outdoor Learning Card Deck to life through conversations with early learning leaders from the nature-based movement. The deck offers options for teachers, parents, and communities who want to make an Outdoor Classroom on a shoestring budget, but don’t know where to start. 

The deck features photographs from The Four Types of Gardens: along with, design and nature-based curriculum prompt questions. The card deck works as an idea generator that has also inspired the Outdoor Classroom Summit.

Let’s bring the Gardens that Feed to life with our featured 2020 Leaders. 

Gardens that Feed are gardens that can be described as Edible Gardens or Vegetable Gardens. The focus is to teach children about nutrition and where our food comes from. These gardens offer captivating experiences for children to use their sense by looking at the and tasting food they have grown themselves. 

FEATURED LEADERS: Lara Lepionka from Backyard Growers and Jed Norris from Shelburne Farms. 

Lara Lepionka is the founder and Executive Director of Backyard Growers. Her story is personal and leads us to how she tore out their postage-stamp lawn, created a micro-urban farm and started growing their won food in the heart of downtown Gloucester, MA. In 2010 with $6,000 in seed funding, Lara helped a handful of her neighbors start their own vegetable gardens, and Backyard Growers was born. Her ultimate goal: creating life long gardeners inspired by the power of growing one’s own food. Come learn what happened 10 years later…

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Jed Norris is the Early Education Program Coordinator at Shelburne Farms in Vermont. Jed coordinated the preschool Adventures program that runs in the fall, winter, and spring. Throughout the academic year, he also regularly teaches school programs; the summer he roams the farm aw=with groups of campers and works with educators on enriching their curriculum through the lens of sustainability. Come hear Jed’s stories and how he captures children’s imaginations. 

Learn more about Gardens that Attract Wildlife HERE.