WE Garden
WE Garden
The WE Garden’s mission is to support our students as they become knowledgeable, responsible and joyful stewards of their world.
Meet Farmer Matt.
Native to Southern California, Matthew Van Diepen is an urban farmer who has been practicing regenerative agriculture in Los Angeles since 2011. Inspired by two college courses, World Food Systems and Native American Conceptions of the Land, he started his social enterprise Home Grown Gardens in an effort to connect people to nature and create a more healthy, fresh and just food system. Since its start, Home Grown Gardens has grown to include a local nursery, farmers market stand, garden education, composting services, regenerative consulting, edible landscaping, garden design/building and school farms. Matthew spends his days educating others on closed-loop system thinking, the joys of urban agriculture and dreams of a world where we grow food not lawns.
Learn more at : https://www.homegrowngardensla.com
Home Grown Gardens has been spreading its roots since 2012, based in Venice, CA, we service LA County from Malibu down to Palos Verdes over to DTLA and beyond. We are a social enterprise who are passionate about regenerative agriculture and closed loop system thinking. A team of avid gardeners with diverse backgrounds in urban agriculture, community building, garden education and holistic health, we are excited to grow with our community! Home Grown Gardens has worked with thousands of students at over 20 schools across LA County to introduce the benefits of gardening to children from preschool through college. These school gardens foster a sense of community, provide food and create pollinator habitats. At Home Grown Gardens, our goal is to bring back the true meaning of "locally-grown" food and to build vibrant communities. We empower people of all ages to grow their own food, providing necessary support along the way.
📷 WE parent Jesse Leon
WE Garden was started in 2005, by Master Gardeners, Nora Dvosin and Nancy Giffin in an effort to enhance the classroom curriculum in an outdoor setting, while also providing students with greater opportunities for nutritional and environmental awareness. WE Garden provides a robust living laboratory for standards-based education. The outdoor classroom supports garden-based science, nutrition, environmental and arts education, with an emphasis on youth empowerment, personal responsibility and joyous participation in the learning process.
WE Garden has grown into a thriving 1/2 acre edible garden and native meadow and a second 1000 sq. ft., TK and Kindergarten garden, aptly named the WEE WE Garden. They have planted over 50 trees on campus, including shade and orchard trees and a native plant garden. The program boasts 4 Master Gardeners, as well as several dedicated Community Volunteers, who lead the outdoor classroom.
WE Garden is a Seed to Table program in which all students, during the course of a school year, participate in planting, tending, harvesting and cooking the fruits of their labors. Local chefs and restaurants are integral contributors to the Garden.
2016
In January of 2016, Westminster Elementary and WE Garden add a Quiet Reading Garden in the main school building’s interior courtyard. The Reading Garden provides a beautiful, quiet space for children to use before the bell, during the school day, and after-school.
2018
The Main St. Greening Project, part of the LAUSD re-pavement project, expanded WE Garden to provide more green space, privacy, and shade around the perimeter of the playground, as well a second grass soccer field. Completed in 2018, the project further integrated the garden into the school campus.
2021
In 2021, a solar powered kitchen to support nutritional education, as well as blue bird and owl boxes for our bird-watching investigation unit were added to WE Garden.
WATCH US GROW
Over the years, our garden has grown to become a model of environmental sustainability for the school and the community. It serves as an ecologically-themed teaching tool to support Westminster’s environmental studies magnet program.
The WE Garden Lab
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
Help make the GARDEN LAB a reality, Donate to the WE Garden today!
To enhance our current program, WE Garden has a vision to build a learning GARDEN LAB to be used as an essential part of the Environmental Studies Magnet curriculum. The building itself would be a teaching tool, a simple three-sided shed constructed with state-of-the-art, innovative technology using photo-voltaic cells to generate electricity, environmentally friendly building materials as its support structure, water catchment systems, induction stoves for nutrition classes, and generous counter tops for science stations to foster student-led inquiries.