Digging learning

Students are supposed to learn the rules of grammar and long division. But Kathy Phipps' students also learn the three-bite rule.

When Phipps' kindergartners eat greens and other vegetables grown in the campus garden at Meadow View School in Santa Rosa, they are supposed to take three bites. Phipps tells the children it takes that long before you truly know whether or not you like something you have never before tasted.

Phipps has joined in a new $15 million effort to get more California public school children to learn by gardening. The money allowed Phipps and 20 other teachers to take a five-day training program this week in the hills above Occidental.

The training deals with practical advice for creating a garden, as well as how to use it to help educate students in such subjects as science, nutrition, math and language arts.

"It's hands-on learning," Phipps said. "You can teach them so many different concepts out there."

This year the state already has agreed to provide nearly $11 million for school gardens, plus equipment, plants and training. A new School Garden Advisory Group will recommend to state schools chief Jack O'Connell how to spend another $4 million provided in legislation sponsored by Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles.

Half the state's eligible school districts, charter schools and county offices of education have applied for funds.

A typical elementary school receives $2,500. Schools with more than 1,000 students receive $5,000.

Those involved hope that students who tend a garden will taste its fruits and vegetables and consider the importance of a balanced diet.

"It's just a healthy way for students to learn," said Deborah Beall, a coordinator of the garden program for the state Department of Education.

Fifteen county schools are using the state funds to send educators to training sessions this summer at the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center. Each school sends at least two staff members.

The center partnered this spring with the Sonoma County Office of Education to help 22 schools receive state garden grants.

About 65 teachers and other staff members from around Northern California will take part in the center's five-day training program at a cost of $500 per educator.

Lisa Preschel, director of the center's school garden program, said gardens are an effective tool for teachers because they allow experiential learning and the chance to conduct all sorts of experiments.

"It's just a wonderful living laboratory in which they can teach multiple subjects," she said.

On Tuesday the educators learned how to propagate cuttings from lime geraniums, lemon verbena, hummingbird sage and other plants. The cuttings were placed in a rooting material of vermiculite and perlite.

The class later gathered beneath immense oaks to learn the proper use of a turning fork as part of the "tai chi of garden tools."

Michelle Vesser, one of the center's gardeners, explained that too many people injure themselves in gardening by relying too much on their upper body -- the back, the arms and shoulders.

Instead, she had the educators stand and learn to do most of the work with their lower body, especially their legs.

"The tool becomes an extension of your body," Vesser explained.

After the chance to use the turning forks on a new patch of soil, the educators headed up for a lunch that included greens and edible flowers they had harvested that morning.

Back by the oaks, Meadow View Teacher Lonna Mulkey shared a passage from a book by plant wizard Luther Burbank.

"Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs and mud-turtles," Burbank wrote. He added a score of items to the list and concluded that "any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education."

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com.