Big Green

Mission: To get everyone in America growing food.

Since 2018, Big Green has built 52 learning gardens in Metro Detroit, and we are continually adding more! In the gardens, we help kids dig into their education, thrive with real, nutritious foods and healthy habits, and become active participants in strengthening their communities. We believe that good food culture brings people together, engages students in school, and enables everyone to live healthy and productive lives.

Big Green aims to improve the health of students and communities by creating experiential learning and garden-based education opportunities in low-income schools. Through our Learning Gardens, we are:

• Increasing students’ academic engagement and achievement.
• Increasing students’ knowledge and likeability of fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Strengthening the school/community relationship by creating opportunities to work together.

We accomplish these outcomes by engaging with schools according to a deliberate continuum of program delivery that begins with the installation of a brand-new built environment—the Learning Garden space. We then work closely with teachers and garden teams to ensure that they have all the gardening know-how they need to be successful teaching in the Learning Garden. We provide workshop-based and 1-on-1 training to teach gardening technical skills, classroom management, food literacy, and more. Once schools are up and running with a basic Learning Garden program, we support them in the selection of a specific curriculum track, and gradually build to deeper learning and multi-generational engagement through our Community Pathways.