Growing a Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health, and Joy

by Illéne Pevec

Overview

A testament to the influential nature of educational and community gardening programs for teens

Part engaging conversation, part comprehensive fieldwork, Growing a Life demonstrates just how influential educational and community gardening programs can be for young teens. Follow author Illéne Pevec as she travels from rural Colorado to inner city New York, agrarian New Mexico to Oakland, California, in order to study youth gardening and the benefits it contributes to at-risk teen lives. Extensive research, supplemented by beautifully candid interviews with students, illustrate the life altering physical and mental benefits that mentored gardening programs can provide. Giving readers the opportunity to examine the largely unexplored topic of urban gardening, the programs discussed present models for future educational and community based gardens. Each destination brings with it an abundance of programs geared toward educating teens by giving them the tools they will need in order to have fruitful futures. With an emphasis on positive psychology, Growing a Life delves into the minds of underprivileged teens and what gardening means to them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613320174
Publisher:	New Village Press
Publication date:	09/27/2016
Pages:	407
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Dr. Illène Pevec, PhD., is a researcher for the Children, Youth and Environments Center for Research and Design, University of Colorado Boulder, as well as program director for Fat City Farmers, a local food education program in Basalt, Colorado.

Table of Contents

Gratitude 7

Preface: Do Our Brains Change While We Garden? 9

Introduction: Why Teens? Why Gardens? 12

1 The Green Bronx Machine 18

2 Planting Trees, Tomatoes, and Transformation 32

3 The Sustainable Technology Effect 45

4 The Challenges These Gardeners Pace 59

5 Choosing Higher Education 76

6 Sowing Seeds for Success 90

7 Gardens Grow Healthy Youth 101

8 ¡Cultiva! A Market and Youth Leadership Garden 112

9 Colorado Rocky Mountain School: Work Crew Gardeners 131

10 Roaring Fork High School Grows Food for Lunch and Sustainability Education 149

11 Teen Mothers Garden at Yampah Mountain High School 178

12 Adolescent Health and the Food Environment: What Difference Can a Garden Make? 195

13 Oakland: Gangs or Gardens? 213

14 Changing the Urban Food Desert 225

15 Harvesting Responsibility 238

16 Youth Reach Out to the Community 245

17 A Mentor Goes the Extra Mile 260

18 Love Cultivating Schoolyards 270

19 Building a Garden Builds Us 285

20 Game Theory, Optimizing a Food Business 294

21 Taos: Ancient Traditions, Young Farmers 312

22 Sembrando Semillas: Community Irrigation, Ancient to Modern 335

23 Feed the Hood 351

24 Physiological and Neurological Research: Clues to Why Gardening Benefits the Gardener 368

25 Cultivating Health, Happiness, and Peace 379

References 395

Editorial Reviews

"“This is an astonishing book! It will inspire you from the first sentence no matter how long you’ve been involved in the garden world. Because of Dr. Illène Pevec’s research, I am beginning to understand what lies beneath our need to grow plants – and that’s after almost 40 years promoting urban agriculture. Read this book!”

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Executive Director, City Farmer Society, Vancouver, BC - Mike Levenston

"“Timely, well-written, and easy to read for people interested in urban agriculture, youth development, and social justice issues. The combination of narrative, personal anecdote, and more scholarly research presents a convincing case for more programs like the ones in this book.”

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Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Colorado, Denver - Jody Beck

""Illène Pevec offers her expertise and insight into the profoundly good effects of youth gardening programs on the lives of young adults, and her most powerful evidence is in the honest voices of the teens themselves. This is a terrific book."

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author of Last Child in the Woods and Vitamin N - Richard Louv

"“This book makes a strong case that well designed gardening programs promote positive youth development. Exactly how they do this is explained by young people in their own words: words that amplify the research that Pevec reviews. The eloquence of the adolescents who share their feeling and experiences in these pages is deeply moving and inspiring.”

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Professor Emerita, Environmental Design Program, University of Colorado - Louise Chawla

"“Pevec's first person documentation of adolescent lives in transition makes this book a remarkably inspiring and grounding read. The interviews, collectively, reveal the holistic ways hands-on learning, mentorship, positive social settings, and a caring relationship with plants can positively affect young lives. The book serves as a powerful call to action.”

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Executive Director, Programs at Evergreen - Cam Collyer

""This book shines a spotlight on youths’ transformational experiences in their urban school gardens, and uses their own words to clearly illustrate the power of nurturing living things to change children’s lives for the better—improving their health, their connections to their communities, and their empathy and care for the Earth."

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founding director, Green Schoolyards America; author, Asphalt to Ecosystems - Sharon Danks