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About the Program
Aims and philosophy
The aim of the Kitchen Garden Program is pleasurable food education for young children. The underlying belief is that by introducing this holistic approach we have a chance to positively influence children’s food choices in ways that have not been tried before.
A Kitchen Garden is created to provide edible, aromatic and beautiful resources for a kitchen. The creation and care of a Kitchen Garden teaches children about the natural world, about its beauty and how to care for it, how best to use the resources we have, and an appreciation for how easy it is to bring joy and wellbeing into one’s life through growing, harvesting, preparing and sharing fresh, seasonal produce.
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Fixed fundamentals
Here is our recipe for an effective Kitchen Garden Program:
Above all, every activity in the kitchen and garden should be an enjoyable experience for students.
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How it works
In the Kitchen Garden Program children across Years 3 to 6 spend a minimum of 40 minutes per week in an extensive vegetable garden that they have helped design and build, and which they maintain on the school grounds according to organic gardening principles. They also spend one and a half hours each week in a kitchen classroom preparing and sharing a variety of meals created from their produce. The project employs two part-time specialist staff, a Garden Specialist and a Kitchen Specialist, to run these sessions. The Program works best when the two specialist areas – the kitchen and the garden – work in partnership with each other, so that these elements form a harmonious cycle.
In both the kitchen and the garden the children work together in small groups with the help of volunteers. The finished dishes are arranged with pride and care on tables set with flowers from the garden, and the shared meal is a time for students, helpers, teachers and specialists to enjoy each other’s company and conversation.
The students are encouraged to experience the pleasures of good food, and develop an appreciation for the rituals and tastes of the tables that will last a lifetime.
There are two unique factors about the Kitchen Garden Program. The first is the intrinsic link between the garden, the kitchen and the table. The emphasis is on learning about food and about eating it. No part of the Program can exist without the other. The second factor is that the Program is embedded in the curriculum. It is a compulsory part of the school's program for four years of a child's life.
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Staffing the Program
In both the kitchen and the garden the children work in small groups with volunteer support under the supervision of the specialist staff and the classroom teacher (the average class sizes range from 20 to 25 students; there are usually 4 – 5 volunteers per class).
It is essential that all Program staff work together to ensure the success of the Program. Kitchen and Garden Specialists must work together to ensure the harvest can generate a variety of meals each week. They must work with the Program Coordinator to ensure their activities are relevant to the school curriculum. The Classroom Teacher should take every opportunity to transfer curriculum from the kitchen and garden to the classroom, and vice versa. The Program itself cannot run without the help of dedicated volunteers, who support the children as well as the staff. The Kitchen Garden Program is built on a basis of cooperation, collaboration, sharing and community.
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Program costs
Establishing the garden and kitchen requires community effort. Once in place, with the garden producing most of the food for the kitchen, the recurrent costs are for the part-time specialist staff, supplementary produce for the kitchen, dry goods, kitchen maintenance, cleaning, utilities, garden supplies such as seeds, seedlings and replacement equipment, and garden maintenance. There is enormous scope for community support of these costs through donations in kind.
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A day in the kitchen garden ...
Growing
Working in the garden means finding out the very best ways to grow food. We also work out ways to save water, to use up scraps from the kitchen, to enjoy being out in the sunshine, and how to look after all the plants in our garden. We now know that worms are a garden's best friend and that snails don't like climbing over eggshells!
Harvesting
We pick many different vegetables and herbs and even flowers to use in the kitchen. This year we have grown broccoli, climbing beans, cauliflowers, cabbages, silver beet, rhubarb, fennel, potatoes, zucchini and many others. Some foods take a long time to be ready to eat but when the weather is warm the leafy salads grow very fast. The broad bean plants are so tall – just like Jack and the Beanstalk. The basil plants smelt beautiful all summer and we used the leaves on tomato salads.
Preparing
Being in the kitchen is great fun and every week the menu is different. We use as much as we can from the garden. Rolling pasta is very popular and everyone has now had a turn. We can make stuffings for ravioli using greens from the garden and ricotta cheese. We can also roll pastry for vegetable pies and calzone; we can make fritters, and muffins and pizza, many different salads and risotto, and in winter everyone loved making soup. Most of us have now tried new foods, and we all think of good words to describe the flavours and textures. The new words are hung on our language tree.
Sharing
Eating the food is the very best part of being in the kitchen. There is a warm and cosy feeling and the room goes really quiet as we taste how good everything tastes. Each group arranges their dish on platters so that every table has at least four different dishes every week. The platters of food look beautiful, there is hardly ever anything left over and everyone feels really proud of their work. It's important to learn to pass the platters and the water to each other and to understand about sharing everything. The tables look pretty with herbs and flowers in little vases.
Read about how the first Kitchen Garden Program was established at Collingwood College, plus 120 recipes in Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids, available for order through the Foundation Shop.
View podcasts of the Program in action at Collingwood College, incorporated in the Rich Picture Case Study prepared for the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development's Knowledge Bank.
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