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Mark Saturday, June 9, 2018 on your calendar --
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Green Apple Playschool’s new greenhouse, built by staff, parents, and students, has generated a lot of excitement and expanded options for learning and play.
AAF&G awards $12,000 to local garden projects, schools and students
Since 1946, Ann Arbor Farm & Garden has raised and distributed more than $600,000 in grants and scholarships to support and promote local garden-related projects and programs. With funds raised from our annual June Garden Walk, we’re pleased to help others create, maintain, and grow healthy, beautiful green spaces for everyone to enjoy.
Our 2017-18 grant cycle recently ended with the following awards made to these worthwhile programs:
- Slauson Middle School: $900, soil amendment and edible gardens
- Washtenaw County Youth Detention Center/4-H master gardeners: $1505, growing vegetables, flowers, and native plants; adding fruit trees, working on rain garden
- Greenview/Pioneer: $2760, invasive plant removal, planting natives grasses and wildflowers; planting native fruit trees
- Apple Playschool: $1660, growing fruits and vegetables in raised beds and greenhouse
- NWF Great Lakes Regional Center/Avalon: $2000 to establish native plant pollinator garden at Avalon Housing Carrot Way Apts., to complement existing vegetable garden
- UM Matthaei-Nichols (MBGNA) desert house: $675 for plants
- UM Biological Station graduate student scholarship: $1,500
- UM School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) undergraduate student scholarship: $1,000
Applications for the 2018-19 grant cycle will be posted in September and are due in November. We encourage any organization with programs related to gardening, horticulture, farming, and environmental stewardship to apply!
Why is what AAF&G does so important?
For more than 70 years, Ann Arbor Farm & Garden has been supporting gardens and green spaces in our community. We’re passionate about gardens and horticultural therapy, and the many, many benefits that accrue from each. Every year we award grants to school gardens, therapeutic gardens, edible gardens, community gardens and more. Why? This is what a sampling of studies and statistics on the many benefits of gardens have to say:
Our efforts DO make a difference!! When you participate in our annual June Garden Walk, you are directly funding worthwhile projects throughout the community. Thank you!!
- Students (grades 3-5) who participated in a one-year gardening program showed a significant increase in self-understanding and the ability to work in groups.
- Students involved in gardening make greater science achievement gains than non-gardening students. Gardening activities can be integrated into all areas of the school curriculum. Parental involvement increases at schools with garden programs.
- Children who grow their own food are more likely to eat fresh fruits and vegetables.
- Youth interns in community gardens reported increases in maturity, responsibility and interpersonal skills.
- Juvenile offenders who participated in a horticultural training program believed that it sparked their interest in further education, gave them ideas for green careers, and improved their job skills.
- Community gardens foster a sense of community ownership and stewardship, bringing people of varied ages, races, cultures, and social class together and enabling them to work and learn together.
- Community gardens are recognized as an effective crime prevention strategy. Crime rates decrease as an area’s green space increases; community involvement puts more “eyes on the street.”
- Gardens filter rainwater, clean the air, reduce soil erosion and runoff, provide wildlife habitat, and beautify our surroundings.
- Being in natural places fosters recovery from mental fatigue, improves outlook and life satisfaction, helps us to cope with and recover from stress, improves our ability to recover from illness and injury, restores concentration, and improves productivity.
Our efforts DO make a difference!! When you participate in our annual June Garden Walk, you are directly funding worthwhile projects throughout the community. Thank you!!
AAF&G
P.O. Box 354
Dexter, MI 48130
P.O. Box 354
Dexter, MI 48130
