MLK's New Greenhouse

The Martin Luther King Jr. Academic Middle School garden is now home to a new greenhouse. We are so excited to be able to produce our own starts and incorporate the greenhouse into our garden curriculum.
In other exciting MLK news the San Francisco Conservation Corps will begin work today on our garden expansion project!! The corps members will be building new beds, bringing in soil, mulching, and building benches for our garden classroom. Stay tuned for pictures and updates about the expansion!

US visits Corpse Flower

This week an amazing botanical event went down in the Bay Area! Trudy, the "Titan Arum" or "Corpse Flower" at the UC Botanical Garden bloomed. Why is this amazing?? Trudy is 16 years old, hadn't bloomed in 4 years, and her blossom was 6 feet tall! It only stayed open for about one day, and gave off the stench of rotting flesh in order to attract the flies that would pollinate it in its native home in Indonesia.

Walter and Adriani, youth and adult staff members respectively, went along with me to Berkeley to check out this massive and stinky blossom (in photo). Although Trudy was already starting to close up her blossom and was no longer stinky, we were so thankful for the opportunity to see this massive tropical flower.

We loved the rest of our tour at the garden as well, thanks to Christine Manoux who showed us around! We were all so inspired and felt like we had travelled the world after strolling through the Asian, South American, and African sections of the garden. What a special visit!

GoogleServe 2009

We would like to say a huge thank you to the folks from Google who came out to the International Studies Academy garden on June 9th. The team built new beds, mulched, built a fabulous pathway and were overall garden superstars. Thank you so much for your support and dedication!!!

If you're interested in organizing a work day for your company or organization please contact us: helpout@urbansprouts.org

2009 Childhood Obesity Conference

Tomorrow at the 2009 Childhood Obesity Conference in LA, I'll be presenting on Urban Sprouts' program model for garden-based education and our recent evaluation results!

This work is a partnership with Portland, Oregon's Ecotrust, and also shows off their accomplishments in Farm to School and creating locally grown and produced school lunches.

If you'd like to see the slides and download the handout of the model, follow this link.

Also check out these California resources on School Gardens and Farm to School.

Farmer-in-Residence Update

Our 4 Farmer-in-Residence families are off to a tremendous start. We have harvested mustards and lettuce, the squash are blossoming and we're about ready to begin trellising our cucumbers. Work will begin in the next few weeks on new beds at ISA and June Jordan as we prepare to expand our program to incorporate more families.
More Photos.

If you are interested in helping with any of the expansion projects please contact audrey@urbansprouts.org.

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Read up on the State of Urban Sprouts

At our recent Garden Brunch fundraising event, we unveiled our plans for the coming year, and how, during this time of growing interest in school and urban gardens, we will share our expertise in garden-based education with more students, parents, and schools.

Read the address here. An excerpt:

We’ve gathered you all here at a time when economic crisis affects us all, whether you or your loved ones have experienced job loss, retirement dreams cut short, or belt-tightening in the household budget, even affecting your day to day food choices. Today, as we look for hope, comfort and meaning, we have a great opportunity to share the power in the simple act of gardening. Victory Gardens kept our country healthy and hopeful during early 20th century wartime and Depression, and our children grew 40% of our country’s produce right in their own school gardens.

With this inspiration, this year Urban Sprouts has launched a brand new program, our Family Farmers-in-Residence program. Read more here -->

Join our Summer Program 2009

We are accepting applications for our 2009 Summer Program at the Garden for the Environment!

Middle and high school students living in San Francisco, CLICK HERE for more information and to download applications.

Volunteers, read here, too! We'd love your help!