Growing vegetables, eating healthfully and giving to the community – this is what children learn from the Delaware-based school program, Healthy Foods for Healthy Kids (HFHK). Founded in 2004 by Thianda Manzara, a formally trained biologist with a yen for vegetable gardening and youth education, the program started with one Wilmington, DE, school and has blossomed to include seven. In 2009 alone, participating schools provided hundreds of pounds of produce for their own school lunchrooms, as well as for local food banks that feed the homeless and others in need. Few educational programs offer such a holistic approach to teaching.
Students eagerly raise their hands to take part in the harvest.
Photo Credit: Jessie Keith
Permanent raised beds are used for all the HFHK’s school gardening programs.
Photo Credit: Jessie Keith
Thianda holds up a harvested radish.
Photo Credit: Jessie Keith
Students from Brader, a participating Newark, DE, school, harvest mixed lettuce for the local food bank.
Photo Credit: Jessie Keith
Harvest time is the most fun for the students.
Photo Credit: Jessie Keith
Inspired Beginnings
The inspiration for the HFHK program came from The Edible Schoolyard, a nonprofit, 1-acre, organic teaching garden at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, CA. The mission of The Edible Schoolyard is to teach children about gardening, community, healthy eating and land stewardship. Thianda visited the groundbreaking Berkeley program in 2003 and was inspired by what she saw. When she returned to Delaware, she had a clear vision for a garden-based curriculum for its schools.
Thianda envisioned a program where children could grow, prepare and eat their own garden produce in an outdoor classroom setting and learn healthier eating habits in turn. Her own love of fresh food and cooking, which came from her Greek grandmother and mother, inspired the culinary aspect of the program.
Community interest was easy to rally. Delaware is a horticultural state rich in public gardens and green areas. Thianda’s initial Planning Committee consisted of local farmer Pam Stegall of Calvert Farm in Rising Sun, MD; chef Diana Leitch of Diana’s Distinctive Dining; The Delaware Center for Horticulture; and local 4-H staff. The pilot school was a public one – Springer Middle School in busy North Wilmington.
The Program
In partnership with Springer’s principal, Michael Gliniak, Thianda created the school’s planting beds with a goal to conduct spring and fall planting programs. The 7th grade science teachers and Thianda worked the programs into the children’s science curriculum. In the first year they planted and ate vegetables like arugula (Eruca vesicaria ssp. sativa), radishes (Rhaphanus sativus), chard (Beta vulgaris ssp. cicla), lettuce (Lactuca sativa) and turnips (Brassica rapa). All are cold-tolerant, fast-growing crops that students can plant and harvest within a semester. Thianda also partnered with local farmers for student field trips, and uses their produce for cooking demonstrations that focus on the importance of eating vegetables for a healthy diet.
The nonprofit program was made official and given its formal title, Healthy Foods for Healthy Kids, Inc. in 2007. Through the program, Thianda designs lessons that support state learning standards, models them for teachers and assists schools in creating garden steering committees to take over the programs after two semesters. She also writes grants to fund gardens, and has created partnerships with numerous local organizations.
As a result of Thianda’s thoughtful efforts, seven schools – approximately 3,500 students per year – are learning how to grow and enjoy their own vegetables.
The Kids and Their Gardens
The HFHK gardens are comprised of rows of raised beds filled with fertile soil and compost, so the vegetables are easy to grow and the yields high. Successful vegetable harvests have inspired positive responses from the children. (“Radishes are my new favorite vegetable!” was one student’s comment.) In fact, most of the veggies grown include those that most parents claim, “you’ll never get my child to eat that!” But surprisingly, 96 percent of Springer Middle School’s 7th graders (who are typically tough customers) actually try – and enjoy – the veggies they’ve grown in their garden.
Every class gets a chance to help, too. At Brader, one of the participating schools in Newark, DE, the kindergarteners and 1st graders planted a garden in early April. The 2nd graders prepared the soil, cleaned up the garden and composted. All students, grades 5th and below, had a chance to harvest. Their most recent garden featured baby carrots (Daucus carota), baby beets (Beta vulgaris) and spinach (Spinacia oleracea), in addition to the other cool-season veggies grown in the HFHK program.
As an added benefit, many students who have struggled in class have responded exceptionally well to the hands-on garden activities. Once in the garden (and to the happy surprise of their teachers), these students have become engaged and participate, as well as ask questions that befit the most advanced honors students.
The Future
As the HFHK program continues to work with its current public schools to provide vegetable gardening programs aimed at enhancing science education and students’ diets, more schools are beginning to follow. Together with Delaware’s Christina School District’s Child Nutrition Services and The Delaware Center for Horticulture, the organization is working toward adding the program to several more schools. (In fact, it was awarded a grant from Dow that funded gardening programs in four more schools in the upcoming year.) In recent years, they’ve also become involved with Plant a Row for the Hungry (PAR), a national campaign that asks gardeners and gardening organizations across the US to plant one extra row of vegetables each year to donate to local food banks, soup kitchens and service organizations to help feed America’s hungry. (The impetus for joining PAR came from New Castle County Cooperative Extension and the Food Bank of Delaware.)
Thianda is thrilled about the success of her program and what it gives the children. “The payoff is when students discover that vegetables can be delicious, ask for second helpings and argue about who gets to eat the last of the radishes or turnips,” she says. “They are excited to work in the garden. It’s so gratifying!”
