SustainEd Farms at the Growing School Gardens Summit

SustainEd Farms headed to Phoenix Arizona in the middle of February for the Growing School Gardens Summit hosted by Sprouts Healthy Community Foundation in partnership with Life Lab and the SGSO network. We spent four days connecting with each other and other, reuniting with old friends and connecting with garden educators from across the country. We all left with many takeaways but I asked our staff to share out one thing that has resonated with them most. The following are what everyone shared.

We were excited to see an SEF student quote up on a pillar! Of course, we grabbed a picture in front of it with Chris Woodburn from the DPS Office of Sustainability.

Matt: Periodically in my career as a teacher, I felt siloed in my classroom, but that feeling was pretty easily assuaged by simply walking across the hall or stopping by the teachers’ lounge. As an Executive Director and a garden educator, I sometimes have similar feelings, but it’s a bit more complicated to relieve them. While our SEF team is phenomenal, sometimes only another executive director of a similar organization can truly and fully empathize with the day-to-day joys and tribulations of the role.

Because of this, being able to connect with friends, colleagues, and peers in-person at the Growing School Gardens Summit was invaluable. While I can always pick up the phone or log on to Zoom, being able to relax, chat, confide, brainstorm, dream, learn, vision, plan, and laugh with people in a beautiful setting, without our day-to-day distractions and responsibilities, was simply priceless.

The Summit also provided our full-time team with a much-needed retreat and the space to joyfully connect outside of the office. This togetherness, at both the macro and micro level, will drive us further toward our mission and vision and better prepare us to support the 10,000+ students we serve across Denver each season.

Nicole from Schoolyard Roots and Matt before co-leading a conference session.

Maya: It was an incredible honor to attend the Growing School Gardens Summit with my entire team. Returning for my second Summit, and experiencing Arizona for the first time, I left energized, inspired, and carrying practical insights I’m excited to bring back to our school garden programs in Denver.

One session, hosted by Jenna Mobley from Atlanta Public Schools, explored the distinction between managing, coaching, and leading. After nearly a decade of supervising staff, it was both grounding and transformative to reexamine how I support my team. I walked away with renewed clarity about the leader I want to be, along with tangible tools for navigating conflict and cultivating stronger, more empowered teams.

In another session, Marlia Bosques from Plenitud PR prepared Puerto Rican alcoholado, a traditional herbal liniment, guided by rich storytelling about Puerto Rico’s history and culture. The facilitator shared a story she had written for her students to help them connect more deeply with the herbs they were using. That experience was a powerful reminder that education is not just about information: it’s about connection. Story has the ability to root learning in identity, memory, and place. I’m now reflecting on how to weave more storytelling into the curriculum we build at SustainEd Farms, so that our students don’t just learn about plants, but see themselves, their histories, and their communities reflected in the garden. The Summit reaffirmed for me that school gardens are more than growing spaces, but are also spaces for leadership, culture, healing, and belonging.

These were the herbs used in the alcoholado that Maya and Mariah made.

Mariah: Whenever I get the chance to go to conferences or summits involving other growers, I know I’m going to learn something new and share what I know. At GSGS, I sought out people doing work different from my own so that I might learn something new I can bring to my program. I look for people who are serving in a need I may be overlooking in my own work. At GSGS, I met people who help families install gardens in their own yards, people who teach children remedies passed down from generations that have been forgotten, people partnering with other orgs to make sure students are taken care of after school and in the garden. All in all, I met people who showed me that this work isn’t linear, this work can look like so many things and serve people in so many different ways. 

In this session, staff learned how to properly prepare nopales.

Monse: Phoenix’s bright skies, vibrant desert flora, and genuinely kind community made it the perfect place to gather with fellow garden educators. I finally had the chance to meet people I’d only known through online workshops and the Certified Garden Educator course. Being in a room with more than 500 people who truly understand my work, and who are doing similar things in their own communities, felt surreal in the best way.

Beyond connecting with educators from across the country, I also deepened my relationships with my own team. I left feeling energized, inspired, and ready to step into the growing season with renewed purpose. I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to attend the Growing School Gardens Summit. I'm especially thankful to SustainEd Farms for prioritizing this experience and to the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation, Life Lab and the SGSO network for hosting and creating such a meaningful, memorable event.

Monse attended a session and was able to hold a baby chick!

Luis: Phoenix, Arizona might seem like an unforgiving place for agricultural practices but in reality it is full of unique and prosperous methods that date back thousands of years. The highly strategic agricultural practices were impressive to see play out and even more impressive when incorporated into garden-based education at the conference. I admired the dedication and passion that the people of PHX had in garden education and how resourceful people were with their variety of approaches. This was something that was highlighted through the storytelling sessions provided at the conference such as, the janitor turned bee keeper educator to a school P.E. coach using old soccer goal netting as a trellis device. The combination of storytelling in the big group setting to cooking demos was a good reminder to strengthen this practice when engaging with our students in the Denver Public School System. Nutrition education is at the forefront of our mission and I see it being strengthened with deeper connections with the help of historical recipes, ingredients, food justice revolutions, etc. Things that we are currently practicing but could always use some refinement. I am truly excited to be one of thousands of people in the food justice movement and even more excited that I have such an amazing team at SEF to keep making triumphs in the overall movement :)

Erin: About a week separated from the Growing School Gardens Summit I find my takeaways beginning to settle. Spending four days in Phoenix with our, then, full team was such a fun experience and I will continue to cherish the memories we made together, like linking our tubes together and having the best time floating through the lazy river to kill time before heading to the airport.

On the professional learning takeaways I am excited for the new lessons I can add to my middle school curriculum. The first, smaller session that I attended was titled ‘Deshaciendo Fronteras A Través de Historia Alternativa Y Comida’ led by Genesis Mena from Ventura County Farm to School. The session that Genesis led taught about the Bracero program which incorporated a cooking lesson where we made Sopa de Fideo, a traditional Mexican comfort food. Oftentimes Braceros ate this meal three times a day as it was cost effective and they have easy access to the ingredients. The way that this lesson wove cooking, a read aloud and a presentation on the history created such a powerful experience. My students learned about the National Farm Workers Union and Cesar Chaves just a couple weeks earlier and it didn’t quite land the way I hoped it would. So, having participated in this lesson I was energized to revisit this in a different way.

Nick: I was really impressed and inspired by all of the different models of garden education that we saw. It's important to realize that our work is not done in a silo, even when we can feel like we're on our own island out here as SustainEd in Denver. Moreover, I was moved by those that are "wearing more hats" than even ourselves - the PE teacher bringing gardening into his curriculum, and the janitor-turned-beekeeper, and the principal in Detroit helping get their garden up and running, for example. Gardens belong in schools, no matter what we have to do to make it work!

Maya and Mariah basking in the Phoenix sun during some downtime.