Check with local garden clubs. Our club supports all the school gardens in our school district--too bad you are not in our district!

Also check with the district leader for your area for California Garden Clubs, they might know of something.

Ventura county still has some agriculture--there should be some entity out there that will help.

Here is a link that might be useful: california garden clubs web site

You might check with your local city clubs as well, like Rotary. All funding doesn't have to come from one source. I'd also call the closest Master Gardener organization. They might be able to point you in the right direction. Good luck with the program. I know the kids will absolutely love it.

Try the Toshiba America Foundation. A teacher would have to apply for the grant. That's the way I started a school garden. Think about making the boxes only three feet across instead of 4. Kids have shorter arms than adults.

I volunteered with a school that thought planters would be a good learning experience for the students. But the deaf-eared project leaders were not interested in what the experienced gardeners had to say. The children ended up growing a bumper crop of 3' tall weeds.

They filled the planters with good, but weed seed-filled soil. There was no plan for regular weeding; the teachers weren't gardeners. No plan was in place. They asked us to help after the weeds were a 1.5' tall, and we tried, but we could not figure out what the students had planted or if anything they put in was even growing. And the suggestion to pull it all out and start over was met with looks of horror.

The students didn't use the planters again. I think a teacher planted some flowers in the front two, just to keep them from being such an eyesore.

Edit: I got called away to plant a tree and posted before finishing. I didn't mean to sound negative. I just wanted your school to think about the after-construction maintenance period, too. That way, your school's garden will result in a positive experience for the children.

This post was edited by Gyr_Falcon on Sun, May 19, 13 at 15:06

See grant list at School Garden Weekly. Each site as a number or grants available. Good luck!

Here is a link that might be useful: School Garden Grants Resource List

Our experience is that there absolutely must be a teacher or two and a couple of parents completely committed to the project; the principle must also be supportive.

Otherwise, it fails as Gyr-Falcon describes.

Many people simply are not interested in plants. It's the way it is.