Ossining Children's Center Garden Program

Planting vegetables and flowers, watering, creating garden art and especially EATING!!

To educate children on healthy nutrition, sustainability, beneficial insects, pollination and to make the garden a fun, interesting place to visit and explore.

The garden program was started with a very generous grant approximately 5 years ago. The children have to go past the playground, down a 90' walkway across a black top to get to the garden. The first year was difficult to get them past the playground, but now when they hear it's garden time, they RUN there! We have a diverse group of children (some don't even speak english), and we try to encompass foods from all nationalities. We also try to decorate the fences each year so that it truly looks like a children's garden.

 This is an underprivileged nursery school with many nationalities.  The teachers and assistant teachers have truly come around in their love for the garden and the nutrition the children are learning.  It's wonderful to see the kids growing up with the garden in their lives.  Several of them have even started gardening at home.  It's great to see so many gardens popping up around the country and getting children involved.