CU's Garden Mosaics program takes root, renews ties to nature

Ray Figueroa, left, and Felicia Chen '07, CALS, pick up dead stalks and litter in front of The Renaissance University for Community Education's (TRUCE) mural at the Harlem Children's Zone garden in New York City March 23. Figueroa is a youth leader for TRUCE. Cornell students in an urban environment course spent spring break touring green spaces in New York City. They spent afternoons working on the garden with TRUCE kids as part of the Cornell-based, nationwide Garden Mosaics program. Amelia Panico Photography

By Susan S. Lang

A teenager in Sacramento interviews a Hmong immigrant about how he grew herbs and foot-long beans in Laos. A group of Cornell undergraduate students helps clean up the garden at the Harlem Children's Zone, home to programs for inner-city youth, including many children of Muslim West African immigrants. A youth leader in San Antonio, Texas, shows her teens how to use aerial photographs and topographic maps to walk around their neighborhood and note where locals enjoy nature and find access to fresh food. A gardener in St. Paul, Minn., monitors weeds in local urban vegetable gardens and enters the data in a national database; the information not only helps her to learn about plant competition and population dynamics, but also assists a Cornell scientist in developing a research program to manage urban weeds.

These activities, which are all part of a special kind of educational gardening program that connects children with elders, have taken root in more than 20 cities from coast to coast. It's proving so successful in bringing generations and people from different cultural heritages together to investigate the connections among plants, people and cultures in community gardens that it now has branches budding in places as far as South Africa.

It's called Garden Mosaics, and more than 250 educators and 1,500 youth have used its multimedia resources to learn science concepts, gardening practices and ways to improve their communities.

"Garden Mosaics is a science education and national outreach program that combines intergenerational learning, community action and learning about different cultures," explained Marianne Krasny, professor of natural resources at Cornell and the principal investigator for the project.

Garden Mosaics has various components, such as: youth learning from elder gardeners, who share their planting practices and cultural backgrounds; a multitude of resources to help educators, scout leaders and anyone else who works with youth conduct inquiry-based activities in community youth programs and classrooms; national online databases to share details about community gardens, gardeners' stories, urban weeds and community action activities; and more than three dozen science activity pages posted online.

Ray Figueroa, left, youth leader for TRUCE, and Keith Tidball, Cornell extension associate and the national program leader of the Garden Mosaics program, discuss the threat of neighborhood gentrification March 23 in the Harlem Children's Zone garden in New York City. Tidball is the instructor of the urban environments course whose students spent their spring-break afternoons working in the Harlem community garden with local youth. Amelia Panico Photography

The program's resources include an interactive DVD, intended for educators but available to the public, that includes live footage of students engaged in the learning activities; a series of 37 colorful, illustrated science activity and fact sheets (available in English and Spanish with some available in Arabic as well; most also have an educator's page with teaching tips) covering topics from various ethnic crops, such as alache and epazote; insects, earthworms and composting; links to many other educational resources; and a manual for educators. The 255-page manual includes instructions on how to conduct the activities, such as action projects on garden design, land use; nutrition, health and art in the garden; as well as evaluation and assessment activities. Many of the resources also are available for downloading from http://www.gardenmosaics.org.

Krasny says that the Garden Mosaics staff has worked intensively with the Garden Mosaics Leadership Team of 15 educators from 11 cities, who in turn conducted 20 regional and local workshops last year, which reached more than 350 additional educators. Several Cornell graduate students are involved via research projects associated with Garden Mosaics, such as Alexey Kudryavtsev, a graduate student from Siberia who is assessing and conducting a cost/benefit analysis of the relative impact of workshops versus using the program's DVD and the importance of computer communications in supporting educators implementing the program.

Undergraduate students also are involved in Garden Mosaics, serving as interns to conduct pilot projects during the summers in collaboration with camps and other community organizations. Currently, a group has been involved through a course on urban environments. Via Cornell's Alternative Spring Break program, they spent their recent break touring various "green" environments in New York City and working afternoons at the Harlem Children's Zone garden with adolescents involved in a youth development program.

"I believe strongly that a person needs to see things for themselves, to get 'ground truth,'" said Keith Tidball, the national program leader of Garden Mosaics, an extension associate at Cornell and the instructor of the urban environments course, which sponsored the spring trip. "The students explored the neighborhood and did a garden inventory of Harlem to get an idea of the availability of green spaces and to see how horticulture is being used in the area. They also did a gardener interview of Ray Figueroa of TRUCE, who began the garden there to harness some of the energy that inner-city youth have and to give them a respite from the violence and gangs they're exposed to." One of the students on the trip was Tony Marks-Block '07, a natural resources major from San Francisco, where he was a community gardener and an anti-displacement activist.

"We learned about how community gardening was a tool for empowerment and youth leadership in Harlem and about how the current wave of gentrification in Harlem has caused many community gardens to turn into luxury homes that the community cannot afford," said Marks-Block. "In fact, the city is currently trying to develop the TRUCE garden so it can profit over a higher tax base on the land where it is located."

Marks-Block said he particularly valued comparing his experience in San Francisco to the greening movement in New York. "I could see that in both cities there is a constant struggle for land, and that the government will go to any costs to develop communities for the rich instead of the poor." When asked if he minded "giving up" his spring break for the New York trip, he replied: "I did have a spring break! I could not have asked for a more motivational and informative break. It involved experiential learning and was much better than being at home or being a tourist."

Nischit Hegde '06, Industrial and Labor Relations, also is in Tidball's course and went on the trip. "I was born and raised in Queens, N.Y., and was never exposed to community gardens," she said. "Queens is home to many immigrants, many of whom come from agrarian backgrounds. Visiting the gardens in Manhattan was a beautiful experience because each one was home to a different community struggle."

Krasny and Tidball note that programs are budding internationally as well, such as in South Africa and Canada. Krasny recently returned from a two-week trip to South Africa where she visited community gardens, which are common on school grounds as sites for people to grow much- needed food but generally are not used to engage students in hands-on learning. This summer, two Cornell graduate students will be working with the Environment and Language Education Trust in Durban, South Africa, to investigate the potential for educational programs in school gardens.

Garden Mosaics is funded by the National Science Foundation.