The lunch bell sounds at La Colina Junior High School and students start filing out of class. They take up their usual positions in the echoey cafeteria and around the quad, but a handful make their way to the school’s new garden. Then a few more arrive. Then a few more.
Before long, two dozen students are meandering up and down vegetable rows and taking seats on wood rounds in the shade of a flowering mulberry tree. Bees and hummingbirds buzz overhead. A hose trickles nearby. Everyone seems to breathe a little easier.
“The emotional health aspect of the garden can’t be overstated,” said teacher Maureen Granger, who last year, alongside volunteer parents and the environmental education and arts nonprofit Explore Ecology, helped transform a patch of dirt in a far corner of campus into the lush space of respite it is today.
