Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture

Check out the research on particular plants’ abilities to clean up contaminated soil in this online article in College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell university Magazine: http://www.cals.cornell.edu/cals/public/comm/pubs/cals-news/index.cfm

The full article in the from Cornell at this link.

Find links to their pdf pamphlets here.

Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) - Poisonous Invader of the Northeast.

Water Chestnut (Trapa natans) in the Northeast

Have your youth adult teams bring their gardening project to the new Youth Community Action (YCA) virtual classroom. This is an engaging, innovative and high tech vehicle for youth and adults to work through the community action process.

Use the site to view projects happening across the state! Currently there are only two projects listed but we’re counting on you to increase this number substantially soon! The site is password protected so if you want to use the site to work through a decision-making process for individual / group action, you will need to register.

Web page provides all the information you need to get started. Once registered you can explore the different pages for brainstorming, organizinging, identifying resources, creating time lines and so much more.

http://www.yca.dreamnow.org

Improving the quality of out-of-school time activities and creating effective learning environments is of keen interest to practitioners, funders and policymakers. Funded by The William Penn Foundation, Quality Time After School identifies characteristics of after-school activities that are linked to youth engagement and learning across a rich diversity of out-of-school-time activity areas.

Drawing from surveys and interviews with more than 400 participants and instructors from five Philadelphia-based Beacon Centers, the report’s findings highlight the importance of two features of high-quality activities: good group management and positive adult support of learning. Building on analyses of over 50 detailed activity observations, as well as key lessons from past research, the report also suggests a road map for program operators and policymakers to create engaging learning environments in after-school programs.

To read the executive summary, please click here .

Brooklyn Botanic Garden Releases First All-Region Guide For Kids and Families

Gardening With Children

Available June 2007

Brooklyn, NY–May 25, 2007–Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) announces the release of the newest All-Region Guide, Gardening With Children, BBG’s first handbook for children and their caregivers–entirely devoted to activities and projects that connect kids with the natural world through gardening. Families will find a colorful, compact resource that teaches basic concepts in horticulture and ecology in ways that are ceaselessly fascinating and fun.

Gardening With Children offers valuable lessons about raising plants. This groundbreaking guide encourages children to discover nature’s cycles and follow their innate curiosity as they explore garden-related activities and learn how to grow plants from seed. Gardening With Children was developed and written by members of BBG’s expert education staff and explores basic ecological concepts with thought-provoking, hands-on activities for every season. The creative projects in the book are geared for 6- to 10-year-old children who garden or explore along with an adult caregiver; older children will be able to enjoy the book independently.

Scores of fun projects will awaken a child’s sense of wonder about the natural world while nourishing cognitive functioning and self-confidence. Whether readers have access to a large green yard or a simple windowsill planter, Gardening With Children invites adults and children to share the joy of watching plants, and the animals that live among them, grow and flourish.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden established the country’s first children’s garden in a botanic garden and today is known worldwide for its children’s education programs.

According to Sharon Myrie, vice president of Education at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, “For nearly 95 years, BBG has earned a reputation for its groundbreaking, successful children’s gardening programs. Through our hands-on gardening programs, we are encouraging children to be active participants in the full cycle of nature, from planting seeds to harvesting their crops. As awareness of the fragility of our environment increases, it is important to teach our children to be good stewards of the land and to foster a true love of gardening. We are thrilled to extend our expertise to children and their families with the publication of this engaging, innovative and colorful book.”

Gardening With Children features:

• Over 40 hands-on activities and ideas for many more
• Wildlife and food gardening projects, nature explorations, science experiments, journal keeping, art and craft activities
• Easy step-by-step instructions
• Beautiful full-color illustrations on each page
• Comprehensive glossary and index

Information-packed and bursting with colorful illustrations, Gardening With Children allows kids and their families to delight in observing and interacting with plants and animals while discovering nature’s cycles and communities.

The New York Times Book Review called BBG’s handbook series a “brilliant collection of little gardening handbooks…Each one takes a small bite of subject matter and chews it thoroughly…the mix of common sense, practical advice and, on occasion, pointed debunking…makes these slender volumes do the work of books twice their size and three times their price. And what the handbooks…lack in acreage they make up for in authority.”

Ordering Information

Gardening With Children (ISBN-10: 1-889538-30-2) is available at a discount direct from Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s online store at shop.bbg.org, or by calling 718-623-7286. It is also available in bookstores and at garden centers for $9.95 in the U.S./$12.95 in Canada. For wholesale ordering information, call Sterling Publishing at 800-367-9692 or visit its website at www.sterlingpub.com . To receive a free brochure of current and past handbook titles, call 718-623-7241.

Deadline: October 15, 2007

The National Gardening Association Healthy Sprouts Award helps support the growth of health-focused school and youth garden programs that teach about nutrition and the issue of hunger in the U.S. To be eligible, a school or organization must plan to garden in 2008 with at least 15 children, ages three to eighteen.

http://www.kidsgardening.com/healthysprouts.asp