Tilling Tigers
A.C. Williams Elementary School
Commerce, TX
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The Tilling Tigers are the 5th grade class as A.C. Williams Elementary School who will be following the international 4H Junior Master Gardener curriculum.  This curriculum is designed to ignite a passion for learning, success and service and to develop leadership and life skills.  They plan to incorporate all classroom subjects to the proposed garden.  Students will learn how to start seeds in their indoor lab and also learn how to grow vegetables, flowers etc. in their outdoor raised beds.  The final goal is to introduce these students to “real food” that they have grown and to reduce the incidence of childhood obesity.  They will also learn in the process about plant development, soils and water, ecology, environmental horticulture, landscape horticulture, entomology and plant disease prevention. 

Benton County’s First Rain Garden
Benton County Master Gardener
Bentonville, AR
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This will be the very first rain garden in Benton County.  The garden will be located at R.E. Baker Elementary School and will be used as an outdoor classroom by providing an educational demonstration site for students and parents to be able to understand the function and benefits of a rain garden.  The creators ultimately hope to reduce the amount of run off that is currently flowing into storm drains.  This gardens goals will help be met through the volunteering of the local Master Gardeners as well as the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension County Agents. 

Colorado College Student Farm
The Colorado College
Colorado Springs, CO
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The Student Farm creators strive to create a student-directed, sustainable, organic garden that will enhance local agriculture and contribute to the local development of an ecologically, economically and socially responsible society.  It will provide its surrounding community with the benefits of fresh food, farm experiences and resources for education and research.  It will be used as an interactive resource for student, faculty and classes at the college.  It will give students access to fresh produce, farm work, as well as provide active involvement in research, youth education and experiential learning. 

Lawn Street Community Garden
Community Human Service
Pittsburgh, PA
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The Lawn Street Community Garden is an existing garden but has plenty of room to grow!  The goal of this grant is to make improvements on the already established garden.  Students of the local youth program, Community Human Services Corporation, work on the current garden and are ready to take on more, they would like to strengthen their community involvement and engage other neighborhood youth not yet involved with the program. Their program is devoted to involving all members of the community into some sort of local service or event.  The garden will provide a larger place for them to do this as well as give them the opportunity to hold classroom like events to inform other community members about the practices of gardening.  The local high school will also be accessing the garden for use as an outdoor classroom.  

Farias Garden
Farias Early Childhood Center
Houston, TX
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Located at the Farias Early Childhood Center the gardens objective is to provide real life, meaningful, outdoor experiences and observations for the centers students.  The teachers feel it is possible to integrate all subjects into the garden, social studies, health, language arts, science and even math.  One of the most important things to the students working on this garden, is to be able to harvest fruits and vegetables to help provide food for the students at their school, of which 93% of which are considered low socioeconomic status. 

Fort Greene Park Entrance Garden
Fort Greene Park Conservatory
Brooklyn, NY
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Fort Greene Park is a 31.5 acre park, located in the heart of an adverse Brooklyn community.  The garden is home to the Prison Martyrs Club, which is in memory of fallen soldiers that died during the American Revolution in New York Harbor.  After years of under funding, with the help of the Fiskars grant as well as the New York City Department the entrance will finally get the attention and renovation it so well deserves.  The garden is hoped to bring about a better sense of community as well as restore some of history. 

Nuestra Zemlya Garden
French Prairie Middle School
Woodburn, Oregon
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The French Prairie Middle School basis its philosophy on the three R’s, rigor, relevance and relationships.  All of which come back to what happens in their garden, rigor involved in the work and attention to detail, relevance when class materials are related to the garden and relationships from the bonds they create from the time spent in the garden.  The list of learning objectives created by teachers at the middle school cross many different content areas and all incorporate the garden in some way.  The school has reached out to local community organizations and individuals who are well versed in the art of gardening to help them with their project plan and execution to ensure accuracy.

The Bailey Peninsula
The Green Team of South Park High School
Buffalo, NY
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What started as a group of four students has grown into an army of gardeners.  This army has created a cornerstone of environmental activism and expanded their efforts throughout the community.  Their goal is to use the Bailey Peninsula to further their efforts.  During the process of planting indigenous flowers, shrubs and trees, this project has changed the way students look at themselves.  The projects history has proven to help students take pride in their community and in themselves, so because of this they want to expand their garden so that more students may feel this sense of ownership.  This has become an entire community effort, many companies and city departments have lent a hand in helping create and continue this project.  Although an existing garden, there is great passion and manpower behind this to make it even larger and more affective. 

Colton Community Youth Garden
Museum of Northern Arizona
Flagstaff, AZ
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This garden was started through a joint effort between the Museum of Northern Arizona and Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy.  The purpose of the garden is to put sustainability education into action.  This program is an expansion of both institutions mission statements and explores and demonstrates the possibilities of a future on the Colorado Plateau, grounded in lifeways of the past.  Specific goals for the garden are to create something that is permanent and can feed us, a hands-on, place-based environmental education program.  Also to create a garden space that is open as a Museum exhibit and an integrated outdoor classroom, a place for intercultural exchange and a commitment to organic gardening methods.    

Heritage Garden
Neighborhood Gallery Arts Center
Atlanta, GA
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The Heritage Garden is an urban community based project that will use art in the form of flowers to provide a back drop for youth and adults with instructions in horticulture as it relates to American heritage.  They feel that urban centers are void of any colorful botanicals which they feel provide food for the soul.  Flowers, herbs, foliage etc. have inspired writers, poets and artists for centuries and they hope it will do the same for the youth in their community.  Many individuals and groups from the surrounding community will be taking part in this garden. 

Seagrove Community Garden   
Seagrove United Methodist Church
Seagrove, NC
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The dream of Seagrove’s community garden is to encompass a space devoted to; raised beds for organic grown lush fruits, vegetable, flowers and herbs with aisles wide enough to accommodate wheel chairs.  It will also be used to provide basic education about sustainable gardens, successful gardening techniques, healthy eating, food preparation and storage.  The community the garden is located in has been severely suffering from the recent economic downturn and high crime rates so the creators of the garden want community members to think/look at the garden as a place of healing in a fractured community.

Big Garden
United Methodist Ministries
Omaha, NE
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This vegetable garden will be one of a series of community gardens located in Omaha, created by the United Methodist Ministries-Missouri River District.  This garden will be placed in one of the communities many culturally diverse and/or low-income neighborhoods’.  The goals of the garden are to empower neighbors with the knowledge to grow nutritious food, build partnerships within the community and the opportunity to sell the produce grown. The garden will achieve its goals by providing service learning, neighborhood beautification as well as entrepreneurial projects.  

Touch the Earth
YMCA
Woodstock, GA
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Key Features:  The Cherokee Outdoor Family YMCA has had an Outdoor Education Department for 10 years.  At this point, however, the department would like to start an organic garden.  The purpose of this garden is to educate the future leaders on the importance of gardening and allow them to see the fruits of their labor.  They will learn not only the science based information form the garden but also the personal health benefits from it.  Their hopes are to create memories for the children who have taken part in the garden, positive and reinforcing feelings of accomplishment and pride.  The University of Georgia Master Gardeners Program students as well as local Boy and Girl Scout troops, local churches and school will all be taking part in the efforts of this garden.