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Granny
I wanted to thank
you for a wonderful evening picking food, preparing food, and
sharing a meal together in August. It was a great
experience for my two sons, my wife and infant daughter, and
myself. Involving everyone in the making and sharing of
the meal was such an excellent way to connect people who had not
previously met. Eating food that had just been picked from
your gardens also made the dinner much more meaningful.
-
Michael Roman, Education Manager,
Gorman Heritage Farm
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 Roberta
"Your Web site is full of more
fascinating information and events than ever. We need to
catch up in person soon.
I wanted to update you on the
fact that as Dater Montessori gets to move back to their
renovated site in March (we are still in the swing
space!), we are planning the merger with Imago Earth
Center which will operate a sort of annex out of Dater.
Our discussions about how this
will look in the short and long term have come to
gardening as the natural place for us to start with
students and adults. We plan to use Granny's free and
readily available curriculum extensively in this process
as we build our new program.
Visiting Dater Montessori
Nature Center maze in 2004
Please be in touch if anything
comes to mind with regard to this and I hope we can see
each other before too long."
Susan Vonderhaar,
Dater Montessori Nature Center founder and
coordinator |
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Yavneh Day school is now
Rockwern
Academy.
 "When
I was asked to create a
school garden
program for Yavneh Day School in 2003, I knew what I
wanted it to be someday, but had no idea how to get there and
really where to start. I met with Roberta, and right away she
was able to tell me the first 5 of the 30 or so steps I would
need to start our own program. She explained how to design a
space that the kids would love to explore and gave me the
confidence to rent the sod cutter. She provided details that I
and my partner Amy had not thought of, such as providing
pathways so little arms can reach half- way into the bed from
either side in order to plant and weed the entire bed. She
also came out to our school before we broke ground to help us
pick the ideal spot in terms of sun and water and public
awareness.
Once we had plowed and staked out
beds and pathways, she gave us ideas for fund raising and came
out to our first garden party to speak to people and just help
plant. She told me where to buy tools and what size was best
for little hands. She was also the main provider of most of
our plant material by using cuttings from her school garden, so
that we could have flowers in time for the new school year in
the fall. Really in short, the Yavneh School Garden would not
have existed without the help from Roberta. She was invaluable
in terms of support at every level of our development. Our
program continues to use all of the things that she help us put
in place, from grow lights, to bulb plantings, to the beautiful
bridge she suggested we build. I personally and forever
grateful for her mentorship and her friendship."
Sincerely,
Lisa McMillan-Samuels
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Rothenberg
School
"Hi,
Roberta. To bring you up to date: On April 26,
2010 the Over The Rhine Foundation will present to
Cincinnati Public Schools the foundation's plans for a
rooftop "Granny Style" teaching garden at old Rothenberg
school on Main street in Over The Rhine.
Rothenberg is to be completely
rehabbed over the next two years.
We expect our unique garden will be a highlight both for the
students and the neighborhood.
I know that gardens per se are a
hot item nowadays in inner city
neighborhoods and some schools. Great. But so far as I
know, only you and a school in Oakland CA work so closely
with each class and each teacher (and you
accomplish it with pennies to their dollars). Your
experience in design and management are invaluable to us.
To put it bluntly, without you as a
resource, I doubt we would have the
confidence to be going to the lengths and expense we
plan. We thank you
for your council the past two years
and rely upon you to see us through."
Pope Coleman
Project Manager, Over The Rhine
Foundation
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4/29/09
"Hi Roberta,
As the seeds that you gave me
are starting to sprout, I wanted to thank you again for all
the helpful tips and time you spent with me (and my
brother). It took weeks to get permission to proceed, and
then, as you guessed, they finally said "okay, but no money
& no manpower", but with donations we have three small
raised beds to begin the library garden & the preschoolers
were thrilled to plant seeds & then a week later to see
little plants!"
10/25/09
"Roberta, With
your help and encouragement we had a great first year garden
experience, as shown in this quick flick! You saw some of
these already, but maybe not in this format. The kids are
still excited about the garden."
Wendy Linck
- Children’s Librarian,
Madisonville Branch of the Public Library of Cincinnati &
Hamilton County
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 Amanda Elementary
School, Middletown
"Dear Roberta,
It's
been
quite a year. We got the 75
trees planted [400 kids “doing” the work –with 40
volunteers, dancing around “their” tree, day opened and
folded with full school assemblies, student readings,
etc.] last spring. We wanted to do them in during the
fall, but by the time we got people, trucks, and augers
good to go, there was so much rain, we couldn’t drive on
the site to auger. So, we’ll know next spring if we
watered sufficiently last summer. Lots of help with
this!
K and 2nd are putting in gardens [mostly
flowers, I think … they are making the choices for the
most part], 5th grades have their soil
preparing – they’re supposed to be researching, 4th
wants a rock garden – large rocks they can study.
I’m
now in the classroom [K and 2nd] twice
monthly with “power lessons” – I do intro and wrap-up,
and present stations with teacher and one other
volunteer. Great fun! You can’t possibly now what a
powerful influence you are in this work. I thank you
daily!
"
Chris Parker
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Bob Knight.,
architect and Sustainable
Design Coordinator for Cincinnati
Public
Schools
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Jean Meade, MD, DVM, PhD
Farm-to-school
program in Morgantown, West Virginia
program is jointly sponsored by 2
organizations, the Rural Scholars Program in the School
of Medicine at West Virginia University and a non-
profit organization, The Human-Animal Bond,
Inc.
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5/29/09
Roberta,
" Thank
you for your terrific (and very open!) web site. We so
admire all you do with the Granny's Garden project.
We are moving slowly to use our grounds more creatively,
and recently built a small raised bed for an organic
garden. We are ready to harvest our first crop of
lettuce tomorrow morning (our students will enjoy it in
a salad during tomorrow's lunch) -- so while our
progress is slow, we are very excited for the
possibilities that our future holds.
We are submitting a grant proposal to a local family
foundation with the hope that they will give us a
portion of the funds needed to build a greenhouse. It
is so helpful to see how a successful program like yours
works. Please know that we so appreciate being able to
learn more from your experience!"
Roseann Hayes,
parent volunteer/chair
Terrace Park Elementary Environmental Committee
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"I'm
sure you get an enormous amount of e-mails. I just
wanted to let you know how
useful your website is. I am a classroom teacher in
CA and have been working on a school garden for the
past two years. I have found that your site is so
informative."
Thanks and Happy gardening
First Grade teacher/ garden
coordinator with much to learn
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| 10/16/08
"Hi
Roberta!
"I love getting your updates
and appreciate that you continue to include Cincinnati
Country Day School in your communications. We are
gradually launching our program and love hearing about
your learnings. Your spirited tour of the Loveland
Elementary School garden program last fall has been
instrumental in thinking
through our own."
Jane Fritz
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It was such a
pleasure to meet with you yesterday. Wow ! What
an inspiration you are. I have some reservations
about starting this program at Mercer Elementary but
you have definitely inspired me to just do it. I'm
sure problems will arise, as you well know, but you
just deal with it. Right? I've talked to some PTA
members and they are thrilled and are backing me
up. The enthusiasm seems to be there. I will be
keeping in touch with you and hopefully see you this
summer. I would definitely be interested in having
you mentor us ... if that is OK with you. I'm also
going to pull some people together to visit your
garden and to maybe start a new bed this summer.
Again thanks so much for your time, your
inspiration, and your energy. Please feel free to
call or e-mail me."
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1/20/10
Hi Roberta,
"We connected a few
years ago while I was still the Ed Manager at
Gorman Heritage Farm. I'm so inspired to see
how your work has grown and continues to
inspire. Now I'm a full-time stay at home mom
with my girls (ages 3.5 and 4 weeks) and I'm
working to get the garden at Pleasant Ridge
Elementary up and going strong.
I've been asked to recommend kid sized tools to
buy. I remember they can be tricky to find with
a high enough quality to actually do work for an
extended period of time. Do you mind sharing
your favorite sources and manufacturers?"
Thanks for your help!
Keep Growing!
Kate
Labare
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| 1/29/10
Dear Roberta
"I am the PTO coordinator
for an outdoor classroom at Locust Corner Elementary in
the New Richmond Exempted School District.
The PTO, teachers
and administration are interested in
having an outdoor
classroom for our school.
We have
a
rather large area
in front of our school building that could easily
connect with some woods and a creek on
the property.
We will need help with creating an outdoor classroom
design and curriculum integration as well as
implementation once the plans are approved by the school
district and the maintenance department. I have
contacted Mark Deacon at Cincinnati State for his input
and he suggested that I contact
Granny’s Garden
to start.
I am
familiar with your
program since several of my colleagues from
Lyondell Chemical
Company
worked in your gardens in
May 2007 for our Global Care Day project. I would like
to speak with someone and get a tour arranged if
possible. There are
a couple of parents and
teachers on our committee that are also interested in
attending."
Amy
Weiskitter
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12/15/09
Roberta,
"I know I contacted you a
few years ago about starting a school garden at Little
Miami Schools. I think we are finally ready to get
started. Could you help me with a few items?
First, the
school principal at our new Intermediate school is
wondering what he will need to approach the
Superintendent and BOE to get started. My feeling is
that this will not impact our school budget in any way.
Funding will come from private donors and fundraising.
I know we will need to decide upon the specific location
to put the garden. After that, can you think of any
other issues we may encounter?"
Thank you for your help,
Joan
Bauman, MS, RD, LD
Food Service Director
Little Miami Schools
513-899-5130
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Granny
I
just wanted to thank you for your website. It is
very helpful to me as I set up a new program for
a summer camp Called Citi-Gardening. I hope to
help city youth understand the importance of
gardening and maintaining the green areas around
them. If you have any ideas for a summer
curriculum or summer lesions that can help, I
would be grateful.
Thanks,
Chay M Tyler
Program Director
YMCA of Greater
Pittsburgh, Centre Avenue Branch
2621 Centre Avenue
Pittsburgh, Pa. ,
15219
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Hi Roberta:
"My
name is Jennifer Wadsworth and I'm with
AZHomegrownSolutions.org. Anne Goldfeld
forwarded me your email indicating you'd be in
Phoenix again Dec 17th through Jan 7th.
I attended your talk last
year at the Scottsdale Community College Community
Garden and was wondering if you'd be willing to do a
more formal talk on starting community and school
gardens, teaching with gardens, or another topic of
your choice while you're here. AZHS was very
inspired by your last visit and has since helped a
couple of community gardens get up and running."
Jennifer Wadsworth
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| 12/20/09
Homeless
shelter in Phoenix, Arizona
I work at the Lodestar
Day
Resource
Center here in
Phoenix, if you aren’t familiar;
our organization takes a less traditional, more holistic
approach to tackling the condition of homelessness. We
do this through art classes, yoga, book clubs, sports
activities, and the newest project I am spearheading is
a small pilot garden. I believe that through caring for
something from ‘seed to salad’ we can break through some
of the entitlement issues we struggle with, and replace
them with empowerment. We don’t quite have anything in
the ground yet, but we plan on having it set up no later
than the spring. I understand
you will be in Phoenix over Christmas and would
appreciate any direction you can give to help us get
started.
1/11/2010
Hi Roberta
Just wanted to let you know
that the beds are built and the soil is being delivered
next Tuesday. We’re so excited to dig in and start
planting and put some of the plans we
talked about into action.
Thanks!
Paul Huffman,
Associate Program Coordinator,
Lodestar Day Resource Center ,
1125 W Jackson St,
Phoenix, AZ 85007
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| 8/12/09
I work for a
non-profit called
CityCURE that has programs for "at-risk" youth
all over Cincinnati. This school year we will be
integrating a focus on nutrition across all of our
tutoring/mentoring and extracurricular programs. We
would like to bring the nutrition lessons closer to home
by introducing kids to the foods being harvested locally
throughout the year.
At this point, I am
gathering information from local food producers in order
to get our facts straight! If possible, I would love to
get input from Granny's Garden School on what foods
might be the most fun and locally-accessible to focus on
with our students.
Thank you!
Sarah Dupee
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9/2/08
"When Columbus, Indiana
entered and won the America in Bloom contest in 2006, we
learned about Loveland, Ohio and a place called Granny’s
Garden School. (Loveland won the same
year in the children's category because of Granny's)
Because we wanted to start a youth gardening
program in our city a group of us went on a field trip
to Granny’s Garden School. We were amazed at all that
had been done at the school. Equally impressive was the
website that contains the history and detailed lesson
plans.
Since that first visit we have been back several times
and taken others from our community to see what
wonderful things can be done with children and
gardening. Roberta Paolo has been a mentor to me
personally by answering questions and suggesting ideas
to help our local program grow. In the last 3 years we
have tripled the size of our garden at the Foundation
for Youth and have exposed over 200 children ages 5
through 15 to a variety of gardening experiences. We are
now working with some local schools and the hospital in
expanding the program to promote gardening, outdoor
activities, nutritional eating, and awareness of taking
care of our planet. Granny’s Garden School continues to
be the model we use to develop new ideas for our
program."
Linda
Nay
Foundation
for Youth |
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June 19, 2006 Roberta,
I can't thank you enough for your help, encouragement,
time, enthusiasm... well, I could go on. I've been
singing your praises for about two weeks now to anyone
who cares to listen!
The garden looks great (for a new garden) and the kids
worked really hard. It ended up taking us about 6
hours with 12 kids (not a big surprise there.) We
dug the trenches, which then became the paths, lined
them with wood chips from Haddix, had pizza, and planted
all the plants.
The really COOL part, though, was the kids' brainstorm
to create "connecting" paths with flat rocks from the
creek bed! (I think they liked collecting
the rocks the best!)
There's still, of course, a lot more in the garden's
future, but that's a good thing.
Again, I absolutely could not have pulled this off as
effectively without you. Thanks for everything!
I hope I see you around this summer!
Fondly,
Linda Tefend
(new volunteer garden coordinator for St. Columban's
junior high garden!)
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 Roberta,
Can't thank you enough for the tools and hay. Here is
our finished Fall display in one of our courtyards. The
school is loving it. We made two scarecrows, Hard to
see the one on the left. The kids did a great job. I
took the pic this morning, because we ran out of time
yesterday afternoon. There are a couple of members
missing. Next week, we will plant bulbs around the
Marquis.
Have a great weekend. I will call sometime about the
cutting/starts.
Cynthia Dillar |
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3/24/2010
