​LAWNS 2 LETTUCE 4 LUNCH®

 

A Community Celebration

 

An exciting, unique school-community project, LAWNS 2 LETTUCE 4 LUNCH®, was launched in the spring of 2010 in Arlington, Virginia.  It began as collaboration between the Ashlawn Elementary School and three nearby neighborhoods, and is becoming a model for other Arlington schools and neighborhoods.

 

The ambitious goals of LAWNS 2 LETTUCE 4 LUNCH®  are to help elementary students learn about growing and eating healthy foods; to develop new intergenerational relationships between the school and the community; and to build new relationships among neighbors.  Each spring and fall, students and neighbors grow a rich variety of organic lettuces to make a nutritious, colorful, multi-ingredient FIESTA SALAD for more than 600 Ashlawn students, teachers and staff at a big end-of-the-harvest celebration in both November and June.

 

Ashlawn students plant lettuce around the school, in raised growing beds at the nearby Sunrise Retirement facility and in the Reevesland Learning Garden at historic Reevesland, which was Arlington’s last dairy farm. Also, more than 100 neighbors, ranging from young parents of Ashlawn students to senior citizens, sign up to grow lettuce in containers, in their gardens or in yards where grass had previously grown.

 

For the first time, both children and adults in our school and neighborhoods are excited about lettuce!

 

As neighbors grow healthy foods and build community, they learn from each other, sharing gardening tips and family recipes.  The recipes by neighbors and school staff for corn tortillas, Vietnamese summer rolls, sweet potato soup and applesauce have been used to make sides for the FIESTA SALADS.

 

LAWNS 2 LETTUCE 4 LUNCH® was founded by Joan Horwitt, who is president of the Reevesland Learning Center and was vice chair of Arlington County’s Urban Agriculture Task Force.  A former Arlington County teacher, she wrote a weekly dining column for The Washington Post.

 

See LAWNS 2 LETTUCE 4 LUNCH in action: http://www.apsva.us//site/Default.aspx?PageID=16078