Rachel Cernansky
DCL
I learned about this project on a bike ride to a nearby community garden recently—Boulder's Hawthorn Growing Gardens not only runs a neighborhood compost project, but is getting kids in on the action, too.
The "Children's Peace Garden" is adorable: labeled plots of plants are enclosed by a rainbow-colored picket fence. The two compost signs pictured here are part of a series posted along the fence, and the compost bins are just a stone's throw away.
The garden's website says the composting project, a partnership between the city of Boulder and the Boulder Energy Conservation Center, uses plant materials from the community gardens, the greenhouse, the Cultiva! youth project, the Horticultural Therapy program and the Children's Peace Garden to create a windrow composting system (biomass placed into elongated heaps that are turned periodically for aeration).
School groups are able to visit and tour the site and learn about compost as a means for reducing resource consumption and as a valuable food for plants—they also learn about ways to compost at home.
Part of Boulder's curbside compost collection pilot program, it's really an awesome, everyone-benefits kind of project—kids learn, the waste stream is reduced, plants are healthier, and many of the garden's plants are returned to the community anyway during its annual plant sale. (We went two out of the three weekends and it was packed both times.)
If a similar program doesn't exist in your neighborhood, try starting a community garden, a composting program at your kids' school—or both, and have them work together.
