How a teacher and grocery built a ‘food forest’ at a Miami school. See what it’s like
Dianna Rose folded her arms and rested them on a green fence at Charles R. Hadley Elementary School. She smiled as she took in the fruits of her labor — an edible garden that grew from a $15,000 grant she had won for the school to build a “food forest.”
“I’ll never get it, but I’ll apply,” said Rose, thinking back to when she wrote the grant and sent it off to the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation, part of Sprouts Farmers Market, the Arizona company with locations in South Florida.
Rose, a media specialist at Charles Hadley who was born in Miami, has worked in the county school system for 30 years. This is the 20th grant she’s won for the schools — the largest one was for $100,000.
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Building a food forest
About 20 Sprouts store employees and other volunteers, including Hadley Principal, Jordana Schneider, teamed up to build the garden at the school, 8400 NW Seventh St., in the Fontainebleau neighborhood of Miami-Dade. One of 24 grants like it, the donation is part of a $500,000 investment in schools across the country by the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation.
About 3,000 schools across the country applied.
Rose and Schneider had worked together at other schools, and when Schneider became principal of Hadley about two years ago, she knew the teacher could offer more than her media skills.
“My goal, when I became school principal of Charles Hadley, was to bring Dianna with me because she always does amazing projects,” Schneider said. “I’m always looking for opportunities for our kids.”
To build the garden, the foundation partnered with The Education Fund, an organization that works to fill in gaps in the school system. The food forest — which will be used to source the cafeteria, fill take-home harvest bags for students and serve as an outdoor learning laboratory —was designed by former art teacher Eddie Recinos, now the senior program manager at The Education Fund.
“The school had a raised-bed garden before, and now we built a food forest,” said Recinos, proudly explaining that the new garden was more elaborate than the previous one.
The garden is made up of a variety of tropical plants that do well in the South Florida heat, perennials that last for about seven years.
In the middle of the garden is the heart of the small ecosystem.
“We built what’s called an African keyhole garden, which is made up of banana trees on the perimeter and a compost pit in the center,” Recinos said. Around the banana trees, small gardens contain Okinawa spinach, Brazilian spinach, an all-spice tree and a lemon bay plant.
“These are not your typical plants,” Recinos said. “We don’t use any fertilizers and we only use natural mulch.”
The Charles Hadley garden isn’t the first for Recino or the school system. Over the past 10 years, Recino has worked to design food forests around the community, his first at Twin Lakes Elementary in Hialeah where he worked as an art teacher for 11 years.
For the teacher behind the garden, it’s a proud moment that she can finally take in fully.
“I never tell anyone that I applied,” Dianna Rose said, “until I get it.”
About Sprouts and its foundation
What: Sprouts Farmers Market with about 400 stores across the U.S. and 42 in Florida, was founded in 2002 and focuses on produce and other healthful food.
Foundation contact: Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation at www.sprouts.com/about/sprouts-foundation/
Photos of the Charles R. Hadley Elementary garden
