The 2026 School Garden Leadership Institute - June 22-27, 2026 - Apply by January 30th!

Every year, the School Garden Leadership Institute provides an opportunity for school garden professionals from across the country to collaborate, learn from one another, and develop resources to share with a national audience. In this way, we all become able to better support school gardens in our regions, and also advance the national school garden movement.

The 2026 cohort will be comprised of up to 20 teams of two. Teams may be individuals from the same organization or individuals from different organizations collaborating on supporting multiple school gardens in the same region or school district.

For 2026, we are particularly seeking teams of two from organizations that:

• Support 4 or more school gardens in their district or region

• Will be implementing training for garden-based educators in the 2026-2027 school year

• Are willing to administer a pre-designed school garden program assessment survey to their partner or district school sites with the purpose of building long-term program capacity through enhancing their student experiences, physical garden sites, fundraising, and/or community involvement.

Details and apply here: https://www.lifelab.org/leadership-institute

📅 Date: Sunday, Dec 7
📍 Location: Life Lab Garden Classroom, on the UCSC Farm.
⏰ Time: 1:00–4:00 PM

Join Life Lab for a family-friendly day of nature-inspired crafts to make and take home!

Crafts May Include:

• Flower Pressed Bookmarks and Greeting Cards

• Veggie Print Wrapping Paper

• Wreath Making

• Family Tea Bags

• Seedy Mosiac Ornaments

• Burlap Wrapped Seedlings

✅ Please RSVP

Free to attend - donations are welcome to support Life Lab programs.

Thank You to Our Event Sponsors!

(Español Abajo)

📅 Date: Saturday, November 1
📍 Location: Life Lab Garden Classroom
⏰ Time: 1:00–3:00 PM

Join us in the Life Lab Garden Classroom for a Día de Muertos gathering for the whole family! We’ll harvest the marigolds planted by summer campers and honor loved ones by building a community ofrenda together. This joyful, reflective celebration weaves nature, tradition, and memory into a vibrant community experience.

🌼 Activities may include:

• Scavenger hunt for elements to add to the ofrenda

• Poetry activity

• Skull prints filled with marigold petals & seeds

• Marigold flower harvest for the ofrenda

• Paper butterflies with loved ones’ names to add to the ofrenda

• Seed packet making with garden-collected seeds

• Garden tour

Free to attend - donations are welcome to support Life Lab programs.

✅ Please RSVP Here

Thank You to Our Event Sponsor!

Únete a nosotrxs en el Jardín de Life Lab para una celebración del Día de Muertos para toda la familia. Cosecharemos las flores de cempasúchil plantadas por los niñxs durante el campamento de verano y honraremos a nuestros seres queridos construyendo una ofrenda comunitaria. Esta alegre y reflexiva celebración entrelaza la naturaleza, la tradición y la memoria en una experiencia comunitaria llena de vida.

Fecha: Sábado, 1 de noviembre
Lugar: Salón en el Jardín de Life Lab
Hora: 1:00–3:00 PM

Las actividades pueden incluir:

• Búsqueda en el jardín para recolectar elementos para la ofrenda

• Actividad de poesía

• Impresiones de calaveras rellenas con pétalos y semillas de cempasúchitl

• Cosecha de flores de cempasúchitl para la ofrenda

• Escribir el nombre de seres queridos sobre mariposas de papel, para agregar a la ofrenda

• Elaboración de sobres de semillas con semillas recolectadas del jardín

• Recorrido por el jardín

Entrada gratuita – se agradecen  donaciones para apoyar los programas de Life Lab. 

JOIN US for An Evening with Alice Waters celebrating A School Lunch Revolution, presented by Bookshop Santa Cruz and The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz.

Tickets: $45 (includes donation to the Edible Schoolyard Project and Life Lab as well as a signed book, plus all taxes and fees)

Location: Rio Theatre for the Performing Arts (1205 Soquel Ave, Santa Cruz, CA 95062)

Date & Time: Thursday, October 30th, 7:00 PM (doors at 6:00 PM)

More info and get tickets at: https://bookshopsantacruz.com/alice-waters

Curriculum Connections in the GardenWorkshop

Learn to use a school garden to provide a meaningful context in which students can apply their emerging skills in math, English language arts, science and social studies. Using lessons from using lessons drawn from all of Life Lab’s curriculum participants in this workshop will experience and discuss garden activities. Whether they are graphing the temperature of their compost pile over time; reading a recipe to make fresh salsa; writing a story from the perspective of an ant; or presenting to a buddy class on the animals that visited their sunflower patch, the opportunities for children to practice traditional academic subjects in the garden are limitless! Graduate education unit available.

Learn more and register here: https://www.lifelab.org/curriculum-connections-in-the-garden

Santa Cruz Area School Food and Garden Tour

The Santa Cruz area is home to robust, long standing gardens and innovative school meal programs. Join us to visit resilient school gardens and scratch cooking school meal programs that are exemplary of the programming that has been running for decades.

Learn more and register here: https://www.lifelab.org/santa-cruz-area-school-food-and-garden-tour