Greenport School District’s garden will soon be growing thanks to a $10,000 grant from Seeds of Change.
After excelling in a voting round, Greenport advanced to the top 50 school and community gardens vying for 24 awards. Two school gardens and two community gardens will each receive $20,000 grants, and ten school and ten community gardens were awarded $10,000.
“Winning this grant will go a long way towards providing fresh, healthy produce for our students and community,” Superintendent David Gamberg said. “It will help make a positive impact on the diets and attitudes toward eating for everyone. It will also help provide enriching learning opportunities in all subject areas from science and art, to math and literacy.”
He also has said the garden will be accompanied by a summer camp program and that there are plans to create informational brochures, mailings, how-to videos and cooking classes. The garden will be larger than the current one located behind the school and will be relocated off to the side of the front of the building.
Mr. Gamberg said that out of the 12 school grant recipients only one other winner was from New York — a school in Long Island City.
Seeds of Change was founded in 1989 by a group of gardens looking to make organically grown seeds available to gardeners and farmers while preserving heirloom seed varieties that were in danger of being lost due to modern agricultural advances and continues to carry out this goal