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Schoolyard along with a program to improve school lunches inthe Berkeley Unified School District, have never before alloweda school to create a second branch of their Edible Schoolyard.

After Katrina, Randy Fertel, the son of Ruth's Chris

Steakhouse founder Ruth Fertel, attended a party in New YorkCity thrown by The Nation magazine, and found himself dis-cussing the future of New Orleans' schools with educationactivist Jonathan Kozol. "Behind him Alice was listening,"Fertel remembers, "and she said, 'What about me?' This wastoo good to pass up." Fertel, through his leadership of the RuthU. Fertel Foundation, had supported the work of AnthonyRecasner - a charismatic and brilliant local educator.Recasner founded New Orleans Charter Middle School, thecity's first charter school. From the time it opened in 1999, theschool has been the highest-performing, non-magnet publicmiddle school in the city. New Orleans Charter Middle Schoolalso had an ambitious garden program supported by the NewOrleans Town Gardeners. Fertel approached Recasner, whohad moved his work to Green Charter School after Katrina,about collaborating with Waters. They flew to Berkeley to seethe program first-hand and meet the staff.

In Recasner, Waters found someone who shared her visionand passion for education. "Randy brought this wonderful.enlightened principal of the school up to visit," Waters recallsin an oral history taken by the Southern Foodways Alliancelast October. "We realized that we had everything in common."

Many people had asked to work with the Edible Schoolyardand recreate the program, says Marsha Guerrero, the Director ofSpecial Projects for Chez Panisse Foundation and theCoordinator of the Edible Schoolyard. But Waters and the Chez

Panisse Foundation had never encountered acceptable part-

ners. "This is a very high quality program," Gnerrero says, "and

we expect that it will be maintained in the same way." They real-

ized that Recasner, who she calls "a remarkable educator of the

first order," and the people supporting the program in New

Orleans - Cavato, Fertel, Cathy Pierson of New Orleans Town

Gardeners, The Times-Picayune columnist Lolbs Eric Elie and

Slow Foods leader Poppy Tooker - were the partners they neod-

ed. "It's a very impressive collection of people," (uerrero says.

"You have a lot of people who want to see something wonderful."

"New Orleans," she says, "was exactly the right place and

exactly the right people. It's kind of a dream."

DESIGNING THE KITCHEN

Fertel believes that the Edible Schoolyard in New Orleans

will prove that Waters' approach to improving education

through food and gardening can succeed across the Country.

"People can always say, well, she's in Berkeley. You can (1o that

in Berkeley," he says. "Not only are we not in Berkeley, we're in

New Orleans."

Over the fall last semester, the plans have been laid for the

program in New Orleans. David Waggoner of Waggoner and

Ball Architects volunteered to design the kitchen. Just before

the storm, Marianne Mumfbrd, a landscape architect and

member of the New Orleans Town Gardeners, had completc( a

master plan for Recasner's New Orleans Charter Middle

School. The Edible Schoolyard gave her a chance to rethink

how to design a school garden. She brought in Jeannette

Roussell, another landscape architect at Mumford and her

husband's firm Landscape Images, along with landscape archi-

NEW ORLEANS I December 2006 SYNDEY BYRD PHOTOGRAPHS56

tect Terry Ibert of Ibert and Associates and landscape designerByron Adams - whose family has run a garden center nearbyon Freret Street for many years. She also sought input from theteachers, who were bursting with ideas on how to use the gar-den to teach their subjects. "They are the most creative groupof teachers," Mumford savs. The students then suggested theaddition of a sundial, weather stations, a wishing well and atime capsule to commemorate the school's first class.

The Ruth U. Fertel Foundation donated $75,000 to theEdible Schoolyard and a party to celebrate the 35th anniver-sary of Chez Panisse Restaurant raised $110,000 in seedmoney for the New Orleans program. The Edible Schoolyardwill cost roughly $200,000 a year to operate.

Recasner has been stoking the enthusiasms of parents, stu-dents and teachers about the possibilities of the EdibleSchoolyard. "Sometimes you go too fast, and you miss themost important stage, which is to cultivate everybody's inter-est," he says. "You just make assumptions that folks are natu-rally interested."

"We have a particularly strong group of science teachers onour faculty. The science teachers are looking forward to engag-ing with this immediately," Recasner says. They see the gardenas a tool to take a subject out of the textbook and make it con-crete and real to the students. "Once it roots in the faculty andbecomes a part of the teachers' curriculum, then folks begin tosee the possibility of how it becomes poetry, how it becomes lit-erature and how it becomes math."

Cavato describes the classes in the garden and the kitchenas, "hands on, experienced based learning," which aredesigned to engage students in a way that enhances their edu-cation. In particular, the school hopes the program will raise

students' science scores on statewide exams.The Edible Schoolyard also wants to teach the students values

and reconnect them to their own culinary heritage. "The greatthing about gardening and cooking is that it's a team e'ffrt,"Fertel says. "If you ever saw the way these kids behave in theseclasses, they're just so civil and civilized by the process of dig-ging the earth together and then cooking what they've grown."

Cavato hopes the largely African-American students willlearn about the city's tradition of Creole gardening, a style ofurban gardening unique to New Orleans that mixes vegetables,herbs and ornamental plants on small plots of land or in court-yards. "If you look about our city, what do you see? There is nota whole lot of gardening going on," she says. "If there is, it's hap-pening by grandparents."

KNOWING THE SATSUMAMany students have lost contact with this gardening tradi-

tion and the native foods of the region. "I've been samplingsome of the kids," Cavato says, "and out of tfur classes there areonly about three children that knew what a Satsuma was."Visits by regional thrmers and the culinary board of the EdibleSchoolyard, which includes Leah Chase, John Folse and KenSmith of Upperline, will teach the students about their ownfood traditions.

As childhood obesity increases and type II diabetes becomesrampant among children, the Edible Schoolyard hopes toimprove the students' health by teaching them about goodfood. "I think they'll be eating better," Cavato says. "I thinkthey'll know what are locally grown foods."

The Edible Schoolyard hopes to benefit the economy of th(city and even the state, The students will cook from the garden,but the small plot of land cannot supply lood fbr their dailymeals. Green Charter School, however, hopes to offer its stu-dents meals that meet the standards of the fbod the studentsprepare themselves from the garden. They hope to partnerwith area farmers and food producers to supply the school cai(-teria, supporting Louisiana's small producers and maintain-ing the food traditions of the state.

"We're really a stone's throw from farmers. It doesn't take along bus ride to get you in the middle of a strawberry patch,"Recasner says. "Like the farmers market took root, I thinkthere is a lot of opportunity for this garden to serve this citywell for a long time." Waters, in the oral history recorded by theSouthern Foodways Alliance, shares this vision of the EdibleSchoolyard as a boon to the local economy. "The EdibleSchoolyard intends to be an economic engine for the localeconomy," she says. "What better way to revive the farming, thebusinesses, if you have a school system that buys from them."

The Edible Schoolyard at the Green Charter School is sym-bol of hope for New Orleans' recovery. "It's a chance fir kidsand adults to reclaim their land and a part of their communi-ty that was lost, or partially lost, to Katrina," says Cavato.Beyond recovery, the Edible Schoolyard is a story of rebirth. Agroup of talented and dedicated people joined together toimprove the lives of the city's children. Before the storm, NewOrleans public schools in the city were "largely abysmal,"according to Recasner. After the storm, Green Charter Schooland the Edible Schoolyard may become a school that citiesacross the country will admire and imitate.

"If we don't invest in programs like these that get us back tobasics, we're injeopardy of losing our food heritage. That's real-ly what our economy is based on," Cavato says. "But moreimportantly, that's what our community is based on."

www .n'eworleansfmag,igazine.('om i NEW ORLEANS 57

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: Edible School-yardsSOURCE: New Orleans Magazine 41 no4 Ja 2007PAGE(S): 54-7

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and itis reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article inviolation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:http://www.neworleansmagazine.com