At Elmwood Correctional Facility, we are teaching a course on Ecological Land Management for 15 inmates, and have transformed an overgrown, unused piece of land into a native garden, designed and installed by our incarcerated students. It has been a joy to watch how enthusiastic they are about native plants, how much they’ve learned, and how much they look forward to continuing to pursue ecological land management after their time at Elmwood. Coming up next month, we have another course on Regenerative Organic Agriculture, and are eager to instil more plant knowledge and passion for earth stewardship in our students!

Adrian Deily is project manager for CNGF’s Design/Build Division. Adrian holds an MS from CalPoly SLO in Environmental Management and Services with a major in Forestry.

Rachel Warners is a native garden consultant to CNGF clients and works as a volunteer coordinator. She earned her degree from Calvin College with a major in Biology with a minor in Environmental Science.

Christina O’Connor leads CNGF’s nursery and plant propagation, and manages Hester Farm. She is an outstanding cook, and creates many recipes with the foods we grow at CNGF.

Belle Brown is a climate fellow and a recent graduate of Wellesley College. She has been making an impact by connecting community to healthy local food and participating in Earth Heroes classes.

The post Celebrating Elmwood ELM Success: ROA Classes Starting Soon! first appeared on Plant & Soul California.

Our chef, with expertise in indigenous culinary skills, will create a pop-up kitchen to be transported from our central kitchen to 13 other farm sites. This stand-alone mobile kitchen will be used for food preparation, food safety, serving, and teaching about cooking with up to 200 foods grown and served at outdoor community events. Our outdoor mobile kitchen will be used at our seven Urban Growers Network sites as well as our six Build 25 sites.

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We listened to traditional music from Morelia, Michoacán as we partook in our own butterfly migration throughout the garden. The song, Danza de los Viejitos is also a spiritual dance among the Indigenous Purépecha to call upon four elements, colors, and numbers for specific prayers. As we migrated through the garden the children were able to explore all the different flowers blooming, including blue flax, yellow evening primrose, pink clarkia, and white yarrow and cilantro flowers.

For snack, we enjoyed a butterfly pea flower lemonade and delicious homemade sage pesto. Students couldn’t get enough of the snacks today!

The sage pesto was made with: Cleveland sage, kale, sunflower seeds, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

To make the lemonade, first we brewed butterfly pea flowers which makes a rich midnight blue color. We then mixed it with a lemonade made with fresh lemons and agave syrup. The lemonade has high acidity because of the lemons. Because the butterfly pea flower drink has a basic pH, when mixed with the lemonade a chemical reaction occurs where the drink transforms from blue to violet.

The children were able to smell the scent of the cleveland sage flowers and explore the garden for other scented herbs like mint, California everlasting, cilantro, and lemon verbena.

The teachers shared a song about the different stages of the monarch from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly and the children were excited to see a visual of the monarch caterpillar and butterfly.

The kids were led in a butterfly yoga stretch on their tarp:

The children always engage their bodies, minds, and spirits in a myriad of ways in the teaching garden. Watching them grow and learn with us is an invaluable gift.

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We found a California poppy right near some strawberry plants in the garden. Some of the strawberries in the garden were ready to eat! The children got to pick their own strawberry to eat and were very eager to pick more.

To explore the poppy more, we used plants around the garden to make shakers for our poppy seeds! We collected horsetail as a container for our seeds, an elderberry leaf to cover one end of the hollow horsetail piece, and some grass to tie around the leaf to make sure the seeds didn’t fall out. Teacher Jasmine found that we could stuff the leaf inside the horsetail to hold the seeds as well! The poppy seeds in the shaker sounded a bit like a rattlesnake, one of the animals that lives in the grassland where California poppies grow.

Poppies bloom during the spring and beginning of summer, a time when many other plants are blooming. We explored the garden with the parents and children looking at the different kinds of flowers blooming all over the garden. We found that yarrow, yellow yarrow, and california everlasting (pictured here), as well as flax and cilantro are blooming right now. One parent shared that his father and grandfather would crush cilantro seeds and spread them at the front of their yard for their community to harvest whenever they needed any cilantro. He also shared that cilantro seeds have also been used in Guadalajara to create candies that have a cilantro seed surprise in the center!

The post Playing with Poppy Seeds first appeared on Plant & Soul California.

Teacher Allegra shared that the word “Elder” refers to a relative that is older and, perhaps, wiser than we are. The Elderberry earns this name because its berries and flowers are used for various health benefits (teas, creams, etc.) Allegra shared a story about her grandmother and the children were given the opportunity to speak about their Elders, and about favorite foods that this special elder made for them.

The gratitude today was a type of Elderberry tea that many children tasted and gave a thumbs up to! Some asked for more! We also shared golden raisins because the scrubjay likes Elderberries and other fruits grapes!

As if by magic, we captured a photo of a hummingbird in the garden this morning! Can you spy him in the photos below? We noticed that bees and hummingbirds like purple flowers, and there were many blossoming in the garden today for them to visit and sip or gather pollen from.

Allegra also shared Indigenous flute music and shared that the flutes are made of Elderberry branches that are hollowed out. The children took a cross-legged yoga position, closed their eyes and listened. They heard the flutes, other children playing, birds…and they smelled the earthy smell of the garden soil. They pretended they were Elderberry trees with branches, roots, and flowers.

Some of the children dug in the soil at various places in the garden, comparing the soil. Is it wet? Dry? Dark? Light? Does it stick together? Does it fall apart? Do we see the composting bits of plants in it? We spied earthworms and other living creatures happily living in the soil, decomposers! (we’d shared a lesson on decomposers in a previous week). We touched the soil so our bodies could absorb the beneficial microbes in the soil.

One class arrived and asked if we could talk about composting because they are composting in class. Allegra pointed out brown and green materials in the garden and the children gathered both for the composting bin. CNGF is thrilled when teachers ask us to extend classroom learning!

Another class said that they are studying ice cream, and so we looked at the mint herb that can be used to flavor ice cream.

Each week we delve a little deeper into all of the sensory experiences the garden makes possible…sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. Today we saw and heard the bees and talked about how they gather pollen and take it to another plant so more plants can grow. We smelled the soil and tasted Elderberry cordial with Calendula petals.

Alrie harvested greens (collard, chive, etc) from the Educare and Hester Gardens to share with each teacher!

Below are photos of our explorations. If you look closely, you can see children connecting with other children, adults connecting with other adults, and everyone connecting with the sights/sounds/smells/tastes/textures of their natural world. The garden makes all of this connection, all of this belonging, possible!

Many urban children will not visit wilderness lands for many years. Our garden is their link to understanding their link to nature, and is fundamental to developing a sense of responsibility to their environment. In 1965, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas proposed that the United States adopt a Wilderness Bill of Rights. It reminds us all of why our time together learning in the garden is so important for children’s development. Here are elements of his Wilderness Bill of Rights:

“We believe in the right of children to an understanding of their place in nature’s community, of which they are a part.

We believe in their right of discovery and adventure in nature’s world.

We believe in their right to friendly comradeship with someone older, likewise an adventurer in the out-of-doors.

We believe in their need of the healing found in the wilderness of nature.

We believe in their unfolding response to the warm earth, the friendly stars, the music of streams, the unknown life in the hidden places, great trees, sunsets, and storms.”

The post Gifts of the Elderberry Tree! first appeared on Plant & Soul California.

For our gratitude of the day, we had fava bean hummus made by our volunteer Olivia (from the Favas at Hester Farm), snap peas, bok choy, grapes, and strawberries.

We also enjoyed a sun tea made with hibiscus flowers, star flower, island mallow, mint, yerba buena, and lemongrass – all infused with the power of the sun.

The children made lovely artwork with the herbs and play dough together:

Many of the moms shared the different ways they use herbs in their homes as well as how their mothers and grandmothers used them growing up. Two moms shared the ways Sauco (Elderberry in Spanish) is used in Oaxaca and Michoacán for medicinal spiritual remedies. It was wonderful to be a part of and witness the mother’s inspiration to return to this teaching garden and our Elsee Garden on Race Street to be immersed more in CNGF activities.

A special thanks to our Catholic Charities volunteer who took the pictures today.

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We acknowledged the land and shared among each other the names of our grandparents and the significance of elders in our lives. The children listened to an indigenous story about the elderberry tree and indigenous flute music.

We created pinecone birdfeeders by using a compostable knife to slather sunflower butter in the crevices and openings of the pinecone, then sprinkling amaranth seeds, corn kernels, and sunflower seeds.

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One child brought the teachers a ladybug pupa! This is when a ladybug instar transforms into ladybug beetle.

The children enjoyed partaking in tree yoga and singing the song about deciduous and evergreen trees.

Alrie led the children on a tour to explore all the different types of trees. We talked about the elder tree, fig tree, island mallow tree, bay tree, and many other trees that were present. The kids enjoyed observing the different leaf structures and collecting them.

Some children recognized the snap pea growing in the garden from our compost lesson and started snacking!

We also harvested some fava beans from the garden and tasted them together.

We had spontaneous tag fun, composted our food scraps, made ceanothus flower soap, and searched for ladybugs that were out despite the rain.

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Everyone got a chance to smell the herbs and engage with them. From there Jasmine told the story about the rainbow children so that everyone could remember the association and the properties of the herbs as well as the colors and what they instill in all human beings. Parents, caregivers, and children locked eyes with Jasmine as she told the story in English and Spanish.

From there we enjoyed a delicious snack of air fried rosemary potatoes, fresh strawberries, and jamaica (hibiscus) nectar. Many of the mothers were happy because they were familiar with the jamaica used in the nectar. The hibiscus nectar we enjoyed was made with jamaica that came from the marketplace in Jasmine’s mom’s hometown, pineapple sage leaves, and hummingbird sage flowers, honey, and maple syrup.

Next we gathered some more of the herbs that were on the table and bundled them up with string so that families could take them home and hang them in their cars or in their showers.

We then washed our hands with ceanothus flowers and water, and talked with the parents about ancestral herbs that they use in their homes on a daily basis.

Our teacher Allegra made a gluten-free natural play dough from natural purple and yellow dye. The kids mashed the loose herbs together and different colored doughs together.

Throughout our time together, the beauty of our natural world was the focus … the physical beauty of the many varied leaves and flowers, and the unique and beautiful scent of each herb. The photos below remain after our morning together as reminders of the many beautiful herbs we shared stories about, observed closely, felt, sniffed, and ate:

The children discovered a roly poly and observed it closely:

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