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Green Fork devotees may recall that the day this blog launched, I was in New Orleans for the Jazz & Heritage Festival. It was my first time in the city and as I mentioned in posts about the New Orleans Food and Farming Network and the Crescent City Farmers Market, I was really inspired by the work that is happening there. But after all that, the icing on the proverbial cake, for me, was the Edible Schoolyard.

The morning I arrived for my tour of ESYNOLA, I was greeted by Director Donna Cavato and Chef April Neujean, who filled me in on the the program and its history. The Samuel J. Green Charter School had opened ten days prior to Hurricane Katrina, only to be shut down, rehabbed, and re-opened the following spring. A K-8th grade charter school with no testing requirements, SJG serves students who are predominantly African-American, 98% of whom qualify for federal free or reduced lunch/breakfast programs. Throughout the inside of the school, there is evidence of the program’s success, in the form of photos and examples of students’ work. Outside, of course, success is even more evident, but two years ago, the New Orleans Edible Schoolyard was little more than an idea.

Started in 2006, the Edible Schoolyard New Orleans (ESY NOLA), at the Samuel J. Green Charter School, is the second of Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard Projects. The idea of ESY NOLA sprouted back in December 2005, when Randy Fertel, son of Ruth’s Chris’s Ruth Fertel, met Waters and she expressed her desire to do something for post-Katrina New Orleans. Knowing that local educator Dr. Tony Recasner was an avid supporter of school gardening and experiential learning, Fertel suggested that Waters partner with Recasner on an Edible Schoolyard in New Orleans. By November of the following year, plans were in the works for the main garden, this small raised bed and another next to it became the temporary site for ESYNOLA, and gardening classes had begun.

Since then, the team has yet to slow down. More Creole/urban gardening-style raised beds fill the main garden area, and a large section of row crops have been established to give students an idea of rural farming. Near the outdoor classroom, a miniature wetland area gives children a chance to learn about water cycles and the importance of rebuilding coastal wetlands. Lessons about recycling and sustainability are woven through the project–the tiles that surround the raised beds are roof tiles from demolished houses, and most of the mulch that lines that pathways is made from trees downed during Katrina. They also compost, although before they started generating compost of their own through the garden, they were at a loss for scraps, as the school lunch program includes so few fresh fruits and vegetables.

But the work at ESY NOLA is far from over. There are plans to green the roof of the outdoor classroom, and a site has been cleared for the organic citrus grove, which will be only the second organic citrus grove in the state. Cooking classes are still taking place in the classroom, but there are plans for a full kitchen classroom, as well as to incorporate the food into the school lunch program–although this would be possible now, with outside funding, they are striving to create a model that other schools will be able to emulate.

When April and Donna went back to work and left me to take pictures, I wandered around, in awe, nearly in tears, so convinced I was that this was something incredibly good–this is something that will enrich the lives of the students, and their families, and their city. This is something that should be incorporated into the curriculum of every school, so that every child might be given a chance to learn what their grandparents learned as children–that food doesn’t spring forth from the earth wrapped in plastic, that preparing it involves more than adding water or opening a Styrofoam package, and that precious natural spaces are to be treasured and preserved. That there is a world out there of fruits and vegetables and farmers, and that this world tastes pretty good.

And the kids are into it. When a group of them walked past us into the row crop area, each said an excited hello to Donna and April, who later told me that the students have been a driving force behind the project-while the ESY NOLA task force was willing to allow a year for planning and building the garden, Donna found that “you can’t talk to kids about doing things– you have to do them.”