Apply to Win a Free Project Learning Garden

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Captain Planet Foundation’s (CPF) Project Learning Garden Program is replete with opportunities to support inquiry-based, immersive learning experiences in STEAM education for students of all levels and ages. In conjunction with applied principles of project-based learning, gardens provide teachers and students with outdoor laboratories full of natural phenomena to be observed, explored, questioned, and investigated. Gardens provide meaningful anchors where standard learning objectives merge with real-world experiences, making many of the concepts we teach relevant and relatable to students’ lives.

And let’s not forget the yummy stuff! School gardens are a perfect way to develop young palates for a variety of fresh, healthy fruits and vegetables. CPF’s mobile cooking cart, complete with a Vitamix blender and induction burner, provide educators with everything they need to have a harvest and tasting event in the garden or classroom year round.

This Contest is Currently Available to Elementary Schools in the Following Regions:

  • Nashville Metro Area
  • New York City (5 boroughs)
  • Seattle / Tacoma Metro Areas

APPLICATION DEADLINE: April 30, 2024

THIS CONTEST IS CURRENTLY ONLY OPEN TO
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS IN SELECT MARKETS

Cox Contest Rules
Voya Contest Rules

What You Get with Your Project Learning Garden

PLG SCHOOLS WILL RECEIVE:

  • Five raised garden beds 
  • Fully-equipped Mobile Cooking Cart to prepare garden-fresh recipes
  • Access to CPF’s online garden-based lessons, spanning all content areas and grade levels
  • Materials and supplies to support project-based lessons and garden-based activities
  • Online professional development and training for teachers
  • Strategies for summer garden maintenance
  • Sponsor Associate volunteer day for garden installation
PACKAGE VALUED AT $6,000

Garden Materials & Supplies

Project Learning Garden provides schools with easy-to-assemble raised garden beds, soil, and seeds to get you growing quickly. Schools also receive supplies and tools to take learning into the garden.

Project Learning Garden provides your school with five 4’x4′ raised beds (approx. 80 square feet of total growing space) to get your schoolyard garden started. These beds offer an opportunity for younger students to learn shapes, while older students calculate area, volume, and other measurements.

Each school receives 5 – 4’x4’ square beds (13″ deep).

The kits are manufactured by Gronomics from beautiful, sustainably-harvested, untreated western cedar, which is naturally rot-resistant. Beds arrive ready to assemble with clear instructions for putting them together tool-free. The beds are pre-drilled and ready to receive hardware to support your garden sign (shipped separately). You’ll just need a small wrench to tighten it into place.

Project Learning Garden wagon with tools including spades and gloves

The Garden Learning & Exploration Kit comes packed with tools, books, and other supplies to help turn any schoolyard into an outdoor learning environment. This kit includes everything from trowels, gloves, and seeds for getting the work done; to hand lenses, literacy tools, and measuring tapes for outdoor learning and exploring.

Learning can take place in the gardens even when teachers aren’t around! This interpretive metal sign, printed on highly durable material, provides information and activity prompts that connect learning to the gardens for everyone.

Garden Literacy and Learning Kit, you’ll find an assortment of books to support the Project Learning Garden lessons and help you and your students make the most of your Project Learning Garden. 

In the Garden Literacy and Learning Kit, you’ll find an assortment of books to support the Project Learning Garden lessons and help you and your students make the most of your Project Learning Garden. 

Mobile Cooking Cart

PLG provides schools with a fully equipped mobile cooking cart and recipes to allow easy preparation of produce from gardens.

Delighted young student using a mixer to prepare ingredients

There is no better way to get kids eating fruits and vegetables than to make fun and tasty snacks with the vegetables they have grown.

Our stainless steel Mobile Cooking Cart arrives complete with: a Vitamix blender, an induction burner, and all of the pots, pans, and utensils you need to turn vegetables from your gardens into the snacks that students love!

Recipe book page with handwritten notes

Our collection of school and kid-tested recipes provide you with fun, simple, and tasty options that can be easily prepared by kids using vegetables grown right in your schoolyard.

The School Garden Cookbook’s logo

Conceived and tested by FoodCorps member, Bang Tran, Captain Planet Foundation produced and published this wonderful School Garden Cookbook.  This book is full of easy, colorful, and tasty recipes you can cook right in your classroom with produce from the garden.  It also has wonderful tricks of the trade for doing tasting events with your students.

Someone mixing greens in blender

PLG is proud to partner with the Vitamix Foundation to provide a Vitamix blender with each Project Learning Garden mobile cooking cart. The chefs at Vitamix have developed some tasty and fun recipes for produce your students will grow in your schoolyard garden.