The School District of Lee County recently was awarded a three-year $450,000 grant from the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation for school gardens.

Support continues to flood into the School District of Lee County, providing for gardens at school campuses across Lee County.

The district recently was awarded a three-year $450,000 grant from the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation.

“Sprouts Healthy Community Foundation reached out to us. They gave us, originally, a $25,000 grant around the time when the new store on College Parkway was opening,” Healthy Living Collaboration Chair Leisha Roy said.

The money went towards a garden at Heights Elementary School, which has a student garden club.

“We did a full garden build for them — 20-tower hydroponic system with solar irrigation, six raised beds, a lot of different fruit trees.”

From there, communication continued with Sprouts to share what is happening in the district and what can be done to promote long-term sustainability.

“We were all doing all this garden stuff in addition to our regular jobs,” Roy said. “We were doing this like crazy — no dedicated position from the district, just extra work.”

Long-term sustainability requires boots on the ground and additional manpower because the lack can quash even the most enthusiastic of efforts.

“Then, whatever happens, the garden goes to the wayside, and it’s not sustained,” Roy said. “Our goal is to have our school gardens literally part of the school. To maintain it just like you do your arts, academics. It is a very important living classroom hands on stuff.”

All of this was shared with the foundation at a scheduled meeting.

“I don’t know if we were expecting what they offered. We are the only public school district that has ever been awarded a grant of this size — $450,000 over a three-year period. That money is dedicated to having a position at the district. That is all you do — Healthy Living Collaboration from the time you start in the morning until you leave in the evening,” Roy said.

This money will help the expansion, development and maintenance of school gardens.

In the last two weeks three brand new garden builds have taken place — Caloosa Middle School completed on Oct. 21, Paul Lawrence Dunbar Middle School completed on Oct. 30, and Bonita Springs Middle Center for the Arts completed on Oct. 23. Tortuga Elementary School also received a new garden.

There are 80 gardens in the district, which range from butterfly and pollinator gardens to big agricultural programs where they are harvesting their crops and serving it in the cafeteria.

Environmental Education Resource teacher Susie Hassett said Monday they were on the Cape Coral High School campus helping the culinary class put together hydroponic towers and raised beds. She spoke with students about different methods of container gardening that are beneficial and how to conserve water.

“They hydroponic towers will grow 24 plants in a space that you could normally grow one. It’s totally automated and on a solar panel. Part of the purpose is to get food into the cafeteria on student menus — use the foods they are growing,” Hassett said of the herbs, vegetables, and fruit.

Since Cape Coral has a few long-standing gardens, the schools have become mentors to other gardens across the county. Island Coast High School — the largest garden in the county — and Trafalgar Middle School have flourishing gardens.

Island Coast High School has had its garden in its current location since 2008. It has raised beds, 200 different hydroponic towers and an aqua pond system to grow tilapia.

Trafalgar Middle School has inground gardening, raised beds and hydroponic towers. Hassett said they provide food to Community Cooperative, as well as have a farm share where families can come and take home a bag of food. They are also putting food into their cafeteria — zucchini bread, eggplant pizza, rainbow glazed carrots, kale chips and collard greens.

“They are pretty innovative. It’s fun for the kids to eat what they have grown,” she said. “Every kid in the school goes through one semester of working in the garden, so they understand the process of how to grow food and where it comes from. They tend to value the food and the waste is less because of that.”

Gardens in Cape Coral schools include:

• Caloosa Elementary: Pocket refuge and containers

• Cape Elementary: raised beds and containers

• Gulf Elementary: raised beds and permaculture, chickens

• Hector Cafferata: raised beds and permaculture

• Patriot: pollinator garden

• Pelican: raised beds

• Skyline: raised beds and pollinator gardens

• Trafalgar Elementary: raised beds

• Caloosa Middle: raised beds, pollinator, hydroponic towers

• Gulf Middle: Hydroponic towers, containers, permaculture

• Mariner Middle: raised beds, containers

• Trafalgar Middle: in ground, hydroponic towers, raised beds, containers, permaculture

• Cape High: raised beds, hydroponic towers, permaculture

• Island Coast High: Hydroponics, aquaponics, raised beds, pollinators, permaculture

“There are a lot of different community partners involved in helping us be successful,” Roy said, adding they have a wait list for schools that wish to have a garden at their campus. “We’ve had several schools that had full builds due to Rotary grants.”

Hassett said during COVID they started the Healthy Living Collaboration. When the schools shut down in March, all the schools with gardens still had food growing and plants ready to be planted.

“We harvested the food and put it into the feeding lines and gave away the seedlings to grow at home. We gave away 5,000 plants,” Hassett said.

From there, many school district departments came together and started organizing school gardens as the vehicle to benefit all different aspects of student health and wellness.

Ding Darling Friends of Wildlife currently has the pocket refuge grants open, for which schools can apply until before Thanksgiving for a garden.