SCE Learning Garden 

Background & History

Spring Creek Elementary (SCE) broke ground on a Learning Garden in 2015 following a generous donation from a community member. The initial grouping of 8 raised beds has grown to now encompass a 5400 sq. ft. garden comprising 14 raised edible annual beds, an herb garden, a pollinator garden, and a prairie garden that is currently in development.

Watch this video for all the pictures from our garden and watch how it has grown: 

Our Learning Garden serves as both a formal and informal learning space for students, parents, staff, and community members. Student education in the garden includes: environmental stewardship, applied sciences, nutrition, and life cycles. Students also learn teamwork and group social skills while caring for and maintaining the garden. Volunteers care for the garden during the summer months, where the garden serves to engage and connect parents and community members to their neighborhood school. 

Our SCE Learning Garden is within a clearly defined area, boarded by a concrete curb, and is solely maintained by teachers, students, and parent volunteers. School district landscape crews do not maintain this garden area, and thus do not pull, mow, or spray pesticides on or near the garden area.

A recent focus of our SCE garden is to increase awareness of pollinators including bees, butterflies, beetles and ants. Our students learn of the plight of the monarch, whose population has drastically decreased over the past two decades. Our efforts and focus within the pollinator and prairie garden areas is to increase habitat for monarchs and other butterflies by planting native milkweed, larval host plants, and nectar-producing plants.

North texas Food Bank Partner

NTFB partners with 20+ community partner gardens to grow and connect fresh produce to those in need. Partner Gardens donate anywhere from 10 percent to 100 percent of their yield to a local Partner Agency, while NTFB provides volunteers to help with planting, harvesting and weeding the garden. On average, our Partner Gardens donate between 20,000-40,000 pounds of garden-fresh produce to our partner agency network each year.

Spring Creek is proud to  now a partner with NTFB.  See their site for more information and for a list of all partners: https://ntfb.org/partner-gardens/ 

Follow us & Volunteer

"Many hands make light work"!  We thrive on the work of out volunteers and would love for you to join us in the garden.  You send an email to: sce-garden@googlegroups.com, and request to be added.  From this email, you will get access to our sign-up geniuses and information regarding harvesting, watering, weeding, and more.  Come join us and get in on the FUN!

HELP 'OUR GARDEN GROW'

SCE has a beautiful Learning Garden that we use to engage our students in inquiry-based and hands-on learning in an outdoor classroom setting. Through this wonderful space, students benefit from exposure to a natural, outdoor learning environment and gain an understanding of where their food comes from. Students are able to identify and experience different fruits and vegetables and learn to make healthy life-long choices.

We are committed to making sure we have a successful environment in the garden to translate into the best learning opportunities we can offer our students, but as a public school our funds are limited and we can only do so much without the support of the community.   

The students, teachers and staff would be so grateful for your donation to our Learning Garden program!! 

No amount is too big or too small!

Watering How-to for the summer

Watch this video to learn how to care for our garden and keep it watered over our summer and at home learning months (sign-up for these days is in our google group: sce-garden@googlegroups.com):