Support and expertise for municipalities and schools
Municipalities that want to start or restart school gardens can receive additional support from school garden experts such as vegetable garden coaches or South Holland NDE centres. South Holland schools that would like to start or restart vegetable gardening in their green schoolyard, but lack the necessary knowledge or capacity to get started, can also receive additional support through the School Garden Boost project in the form of time and expertise from vegetable garden coaches or an NDE centre.
Ingrid Boltjes starts as School Garden Developer for South Holland
In her role as school garden developer, she inspires and motivates municipalities to ensure the availability of school gardens. She connects them with regional NDE centres and vegetable garden coaches and makes their expertise and assistance available to municipalities that could use some help. Schools that want to make use of the School Garden Boost hours can also contact Ingrid.
Ingrid has many years of experience with school gardening. She developed various school garden teaching methods and is active as a teacher of nature and school garden lessons throughout South Holland. In her role as school garden developer, she helps municipalities and schools by making suitable expertise or assistance available. Municipalities or schools interested can contact Ingrid via [email protected].
Municipalities’ and schools’ own efforts strengthened
Within the School Garden Boost South Holland project, municipalities and schools are also expected to make their own contribution. Teachers teach the lessons themselves, or the school has a budget available from its own resources or the municipality to continue the lessons after the start-up phase.
Municipalities can call on the project’s resources, for example, to help develop policies or to explore how they can support schools in making school garden education part of primary education in the municipality.
School gardens for full-fledged primary education
In the school garden, children learn with their heads, hearts and hands. They learn about healthy food, natural processes and cycles, and see how crops develop from seed to harvest. Children who garden at school taste more vegetables and develop healthier taste preferences. In addition, the school garden provides an inspiring environment where children apply core subjects such as mathematics and language in practice. Recent scientific research showed that children develop their language skills better and faster in a natural, green environment such as the school garden.
School gardens fit in with municipal policy
For municipalities, the school garden is a way to help achieve various policy objectives. Many municipalities indicate that school gardens fit perfectly within their healthy food strategy, but also that school gardens provide a way to promote connection and participation, biodiversity in the municipality, and teach children to use natural resources, such as water, consciously.
Municipalities or schools interested can contact School Garden Developer for South Holland Ingrid Boltjes via [email protected].