Growing Food and Nutrition Security

We are a group of ASU students tasked with creating a vision: what should school gardens look like in Arizona in 2042? What components make for a successful garden and what are its benefits in the first place? This story map takes users through the critival components needed to ensure sustainable Arizona school gardens. Implementing these elements into local, district, state or even federal policy is vital for ensuring the success of school gardens.

Food Deserts:

• The lack of accessible or healthy food options in a community.
• Correlated with worse student performances and developmental issues

School Gardens in Arizona:

• Across Arizona, school gardens have been growing.
• There has been a positive correlation between school gardens and higher school ratings.

School Gardens in Maricopa County:

• Maricopa has become increasingly involved in school gardens, building more of them and integrating them into classrooms across the county.
• Seed libraries have also become a focus of the county, making it easier for schools or communities to make their own gardens.

This diagram displays the locations of schools across Maricopa county with a color coordinated to their school rating as well as the locations of every school garden in the area, shown in blue. A rated schools are light green, B rated schools are dark green, C rated schools are yellow, D rated schools are orange, and F rated schools are red. This map shows a positive correlation between higher school ratings and shorter distances to school gardens.

The Benefits of Teaching the Garden in the Classroom:

• Using a school garden to teach nutrition curriculum increases children's vegetable intake.
  • This helps decrease plate waste and overall school food waste! With the United States wasting between 30%-40% of the food supply chain every year, this is critical for reducing food waste.
• Students that helped grow the plants in the garden rated a higher preference for fruits and vegetables, as well as a greater taste for them!

The Benefits of the Classroom Teaching in the Garden:

• Students reported enjoying their lessons in the garden and developed a healthier relationship with learning.
• Science achievement improves with hands-on learning in the garden.
• Gardens help students achieve better scores on standardized achievement tests.

Who is benefiting from school gardens?

Students in the gardens...

• report feelings of calmness, safety, and relaxation
• increased interpersonal and cooperative skills that help develop prosocial behaviors

Teachers in the gardens...

• report higher workplace morale
• increased satisfaction being a teacher at that school

• Nutirition and education benefits of gardens will be happening across the majority of schools.
• Curriculum will be available for teachers to use to learn for themselves and to teach their students.
• Policies will be implemented to guide schools on how to use their school garden to benefit learning outcomes.

A school garden support team is vital for maintaining the garden long-term. This can include the following:

• Teachers
• Administrators
• Parents
• School Garden Coordinator
• Community members

Why build a support team?

Gardens are a lot of work, but they also have a lot of benefits! Creating a support team helps ensure that they will be used by all to benefit all. Providing teachers the knowledge and insentive to use their school garden benefits the students they teach and the parents they can bring the knowledge home to. Involving community members such as farmers or those with garden experience helps expand the capacity of the garden Since gardens are a lot of work and teachers might not know how to use them or have the time to learn...

Why is this important?

Barriers, Strategies, and Resources to Thriving School Gardens, a 2021 study found that having a paid garden coordinator is one of the best ways to sustain a garden. It is a common narrative for school gardens to fail because there is not enough support or knowledge on how to use them. Having a paid garden coordinator bypasses this barrior to create a sustained thriving garden.

• United States Department of Agriculture
• School Garden Support Organization Network
• American Community Garden
• Caption Planet Foundation
• Edible Schoolyard Project
• Growing Power
• Kidsgardening.org
• National Farm to School Network
• Slow Food USA's National School Garden Program

Kelly Hedberg at Rover Elementary

• She is a paid garden coordinator that manages Rover's garden.
• Kelly gave us advice that has informed this story map.
• Because of Kelly, students use gardens on a regular basis at Rover.

Did you know it is legal to collect rainwater that falls onto your property in the state of Arizona? This is something not all states allow and can help reduce a household's water usage by a large amount. For example, using harvested rainwater to water a garden or lawn. Some uses of rainwater may require treatment to kill any bacteria that could be harmful so make sure to check online for tips on proper and safe use.

There are many ways to be efficient with your watering at home and in your garden. The basics are things like watering your plants and lawn at night so you use less overall, upgrading sprinkler heads and irrigation systems to more modern efficient models, and trying to have natural shade in the areas you are growing to lose less water to evaporation. 

Ways to be more water efficient that are a little more in-depth can be found on the  Arizona Department of Water Resources ’s website. This includes choosing specific plants that don’t need as much water as others, calculating how much water your garden needs to not over-use, and irrigation system design and building that produces the most efficient water usage. 

What will water access look like in 2042: 

If nothing changes and we stay on the trajectory we are on now the future looks bleak for Arizona's access to water. Currently, there are predictions that the population will increase by 40% by just 2035. That means that the expected increase in water demand could be up to 22%. This will make the state rely more on groundwater until that can’t keep up with demand and then the state could face a problem it may not recover from with a mass exodus due to higher temperatures and lower amounts of water provided to the population. If we change the path we are on by finding and adopting new water practices we could have a much better future where we create a sustainable format for large populations in desert climates. 

Why is this a problem for food:

Overall this is a problem for food because water is one of the most important building blocks of growing produce. With a water crisis on the horizon and no sign of it stopping on its own soon we risk a major collapse of Arizona’s farming industry and like a domino effect many other issues to rise from it. Arizona could see a decrease in foods provided to the state by local farmers and need to pay to have outside crops brought from other states. This could affect families who receive help from organizations in the amount provided to those in need and the variety of options. In the big picture, you also risk an economic hit for the state from loss of revenue from local businesses and loss of tax dollars collected by the state.

Our Vision is that by 2042...

Communities in Arizona are using water sustainability practices to reduce their water use on a day to day and personal level. Another step is to update all local sprinkler systems with the new and water saving sprinkler head designs. To see a decrease in overall usage by the state and less of a demand on the Colorado River would be a huge step to fight this issue.

• Blue Flax Lily (Dianella caerulea)
  • Edible parts: Fruit, seeds, root
  • Culinary use: The sweet fruits and nutty seeds can be eaten fresh or cooked in sweet or savory dishes. Pound and roast the root to eat.
  • How to Grow: Outdoor plant, grows up to 1 meter tall, needs full sun to partial shade, best growth time is spring to summer, low maintenance, toxic to cats and dogs, can do ground planting or pots and planters, responds well to propagation, wide range of growing conditions, ideally be sheltered from the wind, can be grown in sand, loamy, sandy-loam, or clay-loam soils, and best results in drained soil/sand, not too moist
  • Easy Recipes: Grain-free beef and sausage meatloaf, Flaxseed pancakes, Vegan Black Bean Burgers, Peanut Butter breakfast cookies, Vegan flaxseed pudding, Banana almond smoothie, Keto flaxseed bread, flaxseed wraps, super green smoothie bowl, Paleo almond butter banana muffins with flaxseed, homemade granola, no bake breakfast bar, flaxseed twisty sticks, flax egg, flaxseed porridge, no bake energy bites, flaxseed and blueberry oatmeal.

• Davidson Plum (Davidsonia jerseyana)
  • Edible parts: Fruit, fruit pulp
  • Culinary use: The plum’s tartness and color are used in the food industry to dye and flavor jams, chutneys, sauces and yogurt. Early settlers used the plum in jams, jellies, and full-bodied wines.
  • How to Grow: Outdoor plant, grows to about 10 meters tall, needs partial sun to full sun, best growth time is spring to summer, medium to low maintenance, toxic to cats and dogs, ground planting, wide range of growing conditions
  • Easy Recipes: Plum good crisp, plum upside down cake, ginger plum tart, plum orange jam, balsamic goat cheese grilled plums, fruit and cake kabobs, fresh plum crumb desert, brie appetizers with bacon plum jam, plum anise jam, plum glazed cornish hens, meatballs in plum sauce, and plum chicken wraps.

• More Indinegious Plants Will Be Known
• More Recipes Will Be Made That Fit These Plants
• More Culture In Gardesn Will Be Taught
• More Diverse Palates For The Kids
• More Diversity In Total

The gardens currently utilize simple garden beds made from wood that section the various crops by type. The garden beds are kept low to the ground in order to make it more accessible and to give each kid an opportunity to experience the garden from any height and angle.

The current design used for garden irrigation is a hose that wraps around the interior of the garden beds. The hose has micro holes throughout so the water can reach various parts of the garden bed. The challenge is regulating the water supply to reduce waste as much as possible. These irrigation systems are susceptible to high amounts of evaporation that prevent the crops from receiving sufficient water in less time and also lead to significant water loss.

The capacity of communities in Arizona to thrive 20 years from now is largely reliant on a shift in the approach to irrigation practices specifically in the agricultural sector.

To address and mitigate issues of obesity and malnutrition, improve education outcomes, and increase engagement among students, school gardens not only need to be implemented on a statewide level but will also require an innovative approach to irrigation within that implementation. 

In 20 years, irrigating school gardens could look quite different. One such change is the transition to rainwater harvesting as a primary source of water. “As population growth and development continues to strain water resources, landscape water conservation is not just an issue but a necessity,” (Woodson, n.d.).

Rainwater harvesting has the potential to reduce the strain on the water supply in Arizona while also contributing to the development of sustainable infrastructure. Furthermore, it will also reduce flooding, erosion, and stormwater contamination (Woodson, n.d.). This process involves setting up cisterns on hard, impervious surfaces such as roofs and then connecting them to drip irrigation tubing for collection and distribution.

We aim to:

• Integrate schools gardens as part of learning curriculum across all major subjects
• Engage multiple learning styles; play, sight, sound, tactile experiences
• Interaction with plants along with increased outdoor time will cultivate and establish healthier habits for students
• By 2042 we hope to see this as a standard practice of K-12 curriculum delivery in Arizona where
  • Students are frequently working within their garden spaces provided by their schools
  • Students have access to fresh food
  • Students develop understanding of food justice and nutrition
  • Students show improved academic performance

• There are a lot of things that go into creating a school garden in order for it to be successful over a long period of time.
• Implementing policies informed by key elements of a school garden is critical for getting gardens in every school.
• Our vision is that in 2042 not only will every school have a garden, but it will be a garden that is used on a regular basis and actively benefits all community members.