Honest Digs The Garden School Foundation

To celebrate our one-year anniversary of working with The Garden School Foundation, Honest joined in a new garden-building project at 24^th Street Elementary School near Downtown Los Angeles.

As best told in the words of our Honest team, here were some of the highlights from the day:

• “It was cool to watch the kids’ reactions when they found bugs. The garden was awesome. This was the first school I have seen with a big garden space dedicated and organized to help educate the children. I personally loved that my daughter enjoyed helping in the volunteer activities and that I was able to spend one-on-one time with her.” – Lucy C
• “I love the Garden School Foundation! I helped with some leveling to create an outdoor classroom and it is a lot harder than it sounds! It was so neat to transform this rough terrain and piles of mulch with my co-workers into a beautiful surface that will act as an incredible space for students to perform and learn — I want to go back to see the final outcome.” – Hannah H.

• “I spent the day pick axing (pick axing!!) a rock hard 10' x 30' square to level it out for an outdoor classroom space with coworkers and friends, and had a blast. I love how we always put as much into these events as we would when developing a new product or speaking with our members.” – Courtney H.
• “I loved being able to start the day working hard and trying to pull out weeds, and then ending the day with painting animals and watching all the kids creating their own.” – Allison L.

• “It was awesome to partner with the Garden School Foundation. They have beautiful gardens that are bringing people of different communities back to the earth with programs that help people live healthier more sustainable lives.” - Mike B.
• “I loved how excited and grateful they were (The Garden School Foundation) to have us participate. When I was checking in, a volunteer expressed how impressed she was with how many excited and enthusiastic Honest employees were there.” – Courtney H.
• “My favorite part was watching the children and parents participate in the activities that the garden areas have to offer.” – Lucy C.

Even Honest employees learned a thing or two about gardening!

• “I learned that palm trees — even the very little ones (3 inches) — have deep roots (8 inches) and are very difficult to remove.” – Mike B.
• “I had no idea rose bushes were so hard to up-root!” – Allison L.
• “It was warm day and those weeds did not want us to pull them out of the ground, it seemed as if they were putting our strength to the test.” – Lucy C.
• “Gardening and leveling is an awesome workout!” – Hannah H

About The Garden School Foundation: The Garden School Foundation (GSF) is dedicated to providing an interdisciplinary program of education through garden-based learning in outdoor living classrooms. Turning asphalt into ecosystems, they teach standards-based lessons and cooking classes in the garden classroom and provide educators the tools they need to make school gardens thrive. 24^th street Elementary School is the prototype for this program and GSF is currently working to expand this approach to other underserved schools throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District.