30th Anniversary: Youth Education

For the last three decades, GFE has been a place for learning for kids just as much as it is for adults. We have been inviting students to the garden as part of our Field Trip Program for longer than anyone on our current or previous staff can remember — our best guess is that the program began in the early 1990s. Now that we’re celebrating 30 years, the children of those youth that came in the 90s now have kids of their own, who are about to be the age of field trippers themselves.

The oldest field trip photo we have from the year 2009 with previous staff member Nicole.

It’s hard to know exactly what the program was like then, but I’m sure that there are many things that have stayed the same, while others now look very different. When kids visit GFE, we continue to reveal the magic of a garden in the middle of the city through exploring together: tasting, smelling, digging, and wondering. This applies not only to our field trip students, but also to those kids who tag along with a parent for volunteer hours, or for families walking through the garden on a weekend afternoon. Surrounded by the lush, thriving, natural world, it is hard not to feel the magic of this place.

But as time has gone on, we know more about our climate than we did even just a decade ago. We know that individual and collective actions matter and that youth can be powerful change makers. GFE’s field trip program today is unique in that kids walk away with not only an excitement for and curiosity about nature, but also tangible skills for environmental stewardship that they can apply to their home and school environments. Occasionally, we are lucky enough to see students return to the garden during a Saturday volunteer day, touring around their parents and siblings and teaching just as we did for them. On these days, we are reminded that these students are already leaders within their communities, and are already wise young educators.

We know that they will continue to lead for another 30 years into the future, and hope to see their kids visit GFE on field trips as well.