Gardening and Financial Literacy

Our first guest is Ciara Byrne from Nevada. She tells us how the organization Green Our Planet is training a generation of student “farmpreneurs.” Students operate farmers markets at schools—and, twice a year—there is a giant market with students from many schools setting up in one location. The next market will have over 700 fifth-grade students selling fruit and veg from school gardens.

Ever thought that financial literary could be taught alongside gardening? Green Our Planet uses markets as an opportunity to teach more than gardening: they are an opportunity to discuss customer service, negotiating skills, and marketing.

Ciara is a documentary film maker who, in 2013, found herself working in Nevada. Green Our Planet was set up to use filmmaking as a crowdfunding platform for green projects. When Green our Planet successful funded a school garden project, Ciara saw the opportunity to help many more schools.

Green Our Planet has helped develop Nevada’s first STEM garden curriculum for schools (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Green Our Planet is now growing gardeners and entrepreneurs beyond Nevada. Ciara’s work was recently honoured by the Obama foundation.

“Making school fun is critical.”

Visit the Green Our Planet website to find out more.

Rooftop Food Gardens

In the second half of the show, we chat with Hilary Dahl from the Seattle Urban Farm Company. She combines a background in landscape architecture and urban planning with her passion for creating edible gardens.

Hilary has recently been involved in some inspiring rooftop garden projects in the Seattle area. One of these is the Amazon campus, where a collaboration with a not-for-profit organization means that food harvested from the rooftop garden is used for culinary training for community members.
Hilary explains that the building of many new multifamily dwellings in Seattle has given her the opportunity to be involved in a number of edible rooftop garden projects. She talks about rooftop challenges, and also considerations such as weight and irrigation.

Hilary shares another interest with us: broadcasting. She hosts a fantastic podcast about edible gardening called Encylopedia Botanica.