Trillium Charter School is acutely aware of the necessity to create a cultural environment that in every way supports the mission and philosophy of our school. To this end we have created a program of experiential learning that addresses teaching the importance of nourishment, a sense of community on the local regional and global scale, and stewardship of our environment through the teaching of sustainability and ecoliteracy.

The mission of Trillium Gardens is to create and sustain an organic garden and landscape which is wholly integrated into the school lunch program and academic curriculum. We do this through our garden, food and green program that are loosely modeled after the Edible Schoolyard, a highly successful program begun in 1994 as a Partnership between Alice Waters, chef and The Martin Luther King Junior Middle School in Berkeley, CA. The Edible Schoolyard was a program instituted as a way to change the climate of a large, low achieving school.

Trillium has created an award winning student designed and maintained garden whose function is to provide healthy, organic nourishment, teach sustainable living, and provide a living laboratory where students participate in their integrated curriculum on a very experiential level. Students work in small groups with adult garden staff, and volunteers to grow and harvest food and learn how to prepare culturally diverse and nutritious meals. The garden program has run a successful student planned and managed CSA business for three years and plans to become involved in the local farmers' markets.

Teachers and staff of mixed age classes regularly utilize the gardens as a living laboratory to directly support their curriculum. All subjects from art, math, science, social studies, history, language, and literature lend themselves to being explored in the context of gardens and food. For example, a young group of students learns about basic botany through planting seeds; a middle school group learns art, math and ecology skills by designing and plotting layouts, measuring quantities, charting yields and operating composting; and a high school group can explore other cultures, global politics and economics by growing, harvesting and serving non-indigenous food to the school community.

We have integrated Trillium Gardens into our service learning program by having students grow food to donate to local food kitchens; teaching others in the community about gardening and stewardship by working with disadvantage youth programs; and providing a beautiful aesthetic environment which every member of the community can participate in and enjoy.

We believe that the Trillium Gardens project is the perfect method to bring the abstract concepts of awareness, integrity and responsibility down to a concrete and developmentally appropriate level for children and adults of all ages. As Alice Waters has said, "Children learn mutual respect from sharing meals; they learn self-respect from learning how to prepare them and they learn respect for the planet from learning how to grow food in an ecologically sound way."

In conjunction with the garden program, the students and volunteers and community partners designed and built an extensive natural building project: a cob tool shed for use in the garden, complete with an eco-roof.
Just as the garden is a place for students of all ages to come together outside of the classroom to learn about food, nourishment, community, and growth; the cob structure in the garden provides an opportunity for students to learn about alternative, sustainable building technologies, as well as other academic endeavors.

The vision of a different kind of school lunch has always been at the heart of the Trillium Garden and Food Program. We have worked steadily towards a school food experience that incorporates all of the ideals of our school community by growing, cooking and eating fresh, organic, local and delicious food that comes from our garden and local farms. 

Supporting our local economy, caring for our environment and feeding our bodies and minds with food that tastes good is at the heart of our food program. With the acquisition of our new school building and the realization of a commercial kitchen we can close the circle on our garden and food program and learn to care for the earth, grow, cook, eat and learn across the seasons.