A little over a decade ago, Holland Brown and Karen Taylor first met in their children’s elementary school class at Lowell Elementary. The class had recently instituted a classroom garden into the students’ learning, and Brown and Taylor both “jumped on that like moths to a flame,” said Brown.

This soon blossomed into a full-fledged curriculum; over the next five or six years Brown and Taylor developed lesson plans for kindergarteners through fifth graders, all incorporating creative ways to get outside and tie nature to classroom learning.

Lessons are creative and hands-on, such as making salsa or even hatching chickens, hoping to lay the foundation for thinking about the environment, sustainability, and interconnectedness, said Brown.

“It just seems like the earlier you get excited about nature, and you start to think about how connected things are, the more you’ll be motivated to change things for the better, as you grow up and be part of the solution,” she said.

By the time Brown and Taylor’s own kids graduated from elementary school, the pair were teaching every class each month, with dozens of parent volunteers showing up to assist.

“We knew that we wanted to offer this opportunity to students throughout Long Beach,” said Brown. “We wanted more kids to be able to spend part of their school day interacting with nature and learning through that lens.”

Now, Ground Education serves 11 elementary schools in Long Beach, with an emphasis on schools in North, Central and West Long Beach, where there is often less access to nature.

Since the program’s inception, there have been countless memorable moments for Brown and Taylor; Brown recalled memories such as being led by a student to where their seed has sprouted, or watching a student pull a carrot from the ground, or seeing a student who struggled during class be completely immersed in a garden activity.

“All children deserve to know from an early age that they belong in nature and that nature is there to support them,” said Brown.

The organization aims to work with all 40 elementary schools in the district, and they are slowly working towards this goal.

Just this year, the organization implemented programs at Roosevelt, Addams, and MacArthur elementaries, with plans to begin constructing a garden at Roosevelt in just a couple of weeks, with lessons beginning immediately after.

Not only did this fall bring the expansion to new elementary schools, but the organization also recently added six new part-time teachers, bringing Ground Education up to a staff of 15.

“We started with Karen and I wearing all the hats, teaching all day and then trying to run the organization and fundraise at night and on the weekends,” said Brown.

“We’re slowly building out an organization that’s going to help us bring the same quality of garden and the same quality of garden learning to all of our schools,” she said.

Addams and Roosevelt actually reached out to Ground Education following their switch to virtual last year— Ground Education embraced online learning with videos that engaged students and continued to connect them to the outdoors, even from at home.

“It was really kind of magical to be able to just say, ‘Hi I’m here, it’s still me, and nature is still here, the butterflies are still flying, the caterpillars are still hatching, the fennel is still spreading itself,” said Brown. “It was a really odd but also strangely satisfying year in that sense.”

Now that schools are back in-person, classrooms will continue to utilize the variety of videos filmed last year to complement the outdoor lessons— the videos ranged from demonstrating how banana peels decompose, to observing baby chicks.

As effective as the videos were, for Brown, it has been “so amazing” to be back in the gardens with students.

“They would go straight to look for something in the garden that we had shown them (over video),” said Brown.

“So that just made you feel like, yeah, we’re all going to be OK.”

Rancho Los Alamitos receives grant

Even after the pandemic forced Rancho Los Alamitos to cancel fundraising and earned income programs, close the gift shop, and suspend its membership program, the organization has been awarded a California Humanities Relief Grant, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The funding is part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, in response to the pandemic.

Recognizing the increased need for outdoor spaces, Rancho remained open and free to the public throughout the pandemic, while adapting to a new virtual format as well.

The grant will help safeguard the Rancho’s “living conditions,” including livestock and four acres of historic gardens. Many of the plants and trees are heritage specimens over 100 years old.