Locals form community garden

The nonprofit organization One Cool Earth met with Cal Poly students to create their own garden. The organization, which is dedicated to gardening based education in public schools around San Luis Obispo County, is using the space for an enrichment program opening in the fall. 

This program will be called Playgrove, and will teach three to five year old children how to grow and maintain a garden.

On Feb. 24, volunteers were planting, painting and moving mulch to prepare for the new program. Executive director Katharine Rondthaler Krieg says this garden space will be the home base for their organization.

“Our organization has been really spread out geographically, we partner with public schools and we are as far north as San Miguel and as far south as Guadalupe,” Rondthaler Krieg said. “So we have educators all over the county and it’s nice to have a space where we can come together and have our own kind of garden that we have a little more control over.”

As executive director, Rondthaler Krieg helps drive their mission of growing healthy and smart youth forward.  

“I’m a believer that you can’t be teaching earth and life sciences without earth and life in your hands, and our gardens provide that for their school communities,” Rondthaler Krieg said.

Leila Daniel is heavily involved with training educators around the county on how to properly teach children to garden, which remains her driving force behind what she does. 

“I love just gardening in general, that was a hobby even before I started working here, that really drew me in,” Daniel said. “And then just being able to show students that gardening can be such an exciting way to learn and they don’t even realize they’re learning a lot of times.”