Turning School Gardens into Living Classrooms

K-12 STEAM education

City of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a citywide benefit) County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Most students grow up learning about recycling, but few are ever taught how soil is made—or why it matters. In a time of climate disruption, food insecurity, and ecological collapse, we’re failing to teach the next generation how regeneration actually works. Many schools lack composting infrastructure, and science education is often disconnected from nature, creativity, or real-life application.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles sends over 4,000 tons of food waste to landfills every day, generating methane and missing the chance to turn that waste into fertile, carbon-rich soil. Without soil education, we lose the opportunity to teach youth that healing the planet isn’t abstract—it starts with what we throw away.
We believe soil literacy should be as fundamental as reading or math. When kids learn how to make soil, they gain not only ecological knowledge but also hope, agency, and the skills to become leaders in a regenerative future.

This grant will support the launch of a hands-on, soil-based education program in K–12 schools across Los Angeles, centered around the book How to Make Soil and our in-ground composting tower, the Soil Maker.
We will provide schools with:
A classroom set of How to Make Soil
A full curriculum that blends NGSS-aligned science with storytelling, music, and art
A Soil Maker composter installed in the school garden, turning cafeteria food waste into soil
Training and support for teachers, garden educators, and student “Soil Teams”
Through this program, students will learn how ecosystems work, how compost heals land, and how their food waste becomes a climate solution. Each garden becomes a living lab, each Soil Maker a symbol of regeneration—and each student a soil maker, too.

If successful, Los Angeles will raise a generation that’s not just learning about recycling—but actually learning how to process food scraps as they’re made, turning waste into living soil that restores the Earth. School gardens will become regenerative learning hubs where students witness transformation firsthand: from scraps to soil, from waste to growth. Students will learn not just to look at the fruit and the branches but to dig deep and look at the root causes of things and the environments that support those roots, the soil.
Students will gain the skills and confidence to take climate action in their daily lives. Soil Makers will become part of the culture of schools, reminding everyone that regeneration is possible, and it starts with what we throw away. Instead of sending 4,000 tons of food waste to the landfill each day, LA’s schools will become models of how to grow life from leftovers and heal the Earth from the ground up.