Fort Wayne Community Schools Gardening Program Inspires Students and Unites Community

Students at Fort Wayne Community Schools in Fort Wayne, Indiana are building a new understanding of their local food systems and excitement for growing their own food. This is thanks to the hard work of Wellness Coordinator Gina Dundon and a district-wide gardening program.

Croninger Elementary School’s Cafeteria Manager Rebeca Lambert leads a lesson on the tower garden in a 2nd grade classroom.

A 2nd grade student at Croninger Elementary School collects water from the tower garden for a pH test to determine whether their spinach and chard are healthy.

Rebeca Lambert, Cafeteria Manager at Croninger Elementary, helps a student perform a pH test on their tower garden’s water.

Second grade students at Croninger Elementary School test the pH of their tower garden’s water. They compare the color of their sample to the colors on their pH chart.

Jennifer Johnson, a 2nd grade teacher at Croninger Elementary School, serves students broccoli microgreens provided by local farms through the Harvest of the Month program.

Growing up in a sprawling urban city, students at Fort Wayne Community Schools have little exposure to where their food comes from. “It’s very hard for our children to understand a farm,” says Dundon. “Where does food come from? It comes from the store!” That’s why when Dundon saw the success of a neighboring school’s hydroponic garden program, she knew her school district had to implement one, too.

In 2019, Dundon launched the district’s gardening program with funding from the Indiana Department of Health, through their Health Issues and Challenges Grant and Indiana Healthy Schools Grant, as well as partnerships with Parkview Health and Indiana’s Managed Health Services. What began as a budding handful of hydroponic tower gardens in FWCS high schools has blossomed into 52 tower gardens throughout the district —  at least one in every elementary, middle, and high school.

Hydroponic growing lets the students get up close and personal with each stage of the plants’ growth — and the students are loving it. “When you put a seed in a pot, you don’t really get to see it all,” Dundon explains. “But you can actually take these out and look at the roots.” 

Each district school is given an identical tower garden, complete with grow lights and wheels for easy transportation, but what the school and students do with their gardens is uniquely theirs. “We’ve allowed every school to say, ‘How do we want to make this garden ours?’” says Dundon. 

“We’ve had not just teachers join, but cafeteria managers, assistants, the school therapist, the school nurse…” Dundon explains. “We’ve had all these adults come together to really help this program blossom and bloom.”

The results are wonderfully varied. Schools creatively incorporate the tower gardens into lessons in biology and culinary classes, cafeteria programs, and more. At Croninger Elementary, a local primary school in the district, teachers built the gardening program into their STEM lessons and use it as an opportunity to teach students about pH testing. 

To further foster students’ love of gardening, FWCS also joined the Harvest of the Month program three years ago. This program, funded by Parkview Health, is a “farm-to-school” initiative that pairs schools with local farmers for monthly tastes of freshly grown produce. Farmers have introduced students to beets, radishes, sprouts, and more. 

The excitement over these programs is infectious. The students and teachers’ newfound love for gardening extends beyond the classroom and into the Fort Wayne community. Students take fruits and vegetables home to share with friends and family. “That way they can tell their parents, ‘I grew this — I love this! Can we have more of this?’”

Dundon and the Fort Wayne Community Schools have shown just how simple it is to get their own programs up and running, and now, the entire community wants to join in on the learning and harvest. With tower gardens cropping up across the greater Fort Wayne community, it’s safe to say Dundon and her initiative have inspired a greener future for the city of Fort Wayne.