UC Cooperative Extension 4-H and environmental horticulture advisor Rose Hayden-Smith provided information about California school gardens to an Associated Press writer who was reporting on the growing popularity of school gardens in the United States.
The story focused on a concrete schoolyard in hurricane-recovering New Orleans that has been transformed into a garden. It appears that writer Janet McConnaughy was looking for national numbers on school gardens, but noted that difinitive data are scarce. She wrote that the National Gardening Association's online registry lists 1,500 school gardens, up from 1,100 a year ago, and she spoke to Hayden-Smith for information on California's school gardens.
Hayden-Smith told the reporter that California alone had about 1,000 instructional school gardens in 1995 and triple that number by 2000. Nearly 3,850 schools - more than 40 percent of all state schools - got state grants last year to begin or improve gardens, according to the article.
