Project: Evergreen Earth Garden - Post Hurricane Helene Revival

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Narrative:

Evergreen Community Charter School is located in Asheville, NC, the epicenter of Hurricane Helene, which struck just over one year ago and caused fatal widespread flooding, landslides, and wind damage throughout our region. While our buildings were unharmed, our campus grounds received significant damage with downed trees and soil damage. This grant will support the revitalization of Evergreen’s Earth Garden, bringing back our vital community space for learning, connection, and resilience following the storm.

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Our goal for the upcoming year is to revive our Earth Garden as a place where our school community can once again gather together, share meals, work side by side, and grow food. Produce from the garden will directly support our school’s new kitchen, scheduled to open in the spring of 2026 as part of our student nutrition program, while also providing herbs, flowers, and habitat for native pollinators.

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Evergreen Community Charter School is a tuition-free public school for kindergarten through 8th grade. Grounded in the EL Education teaching model developed by Outward Bound and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Evergreen emphasizes experiential, real-world learning that connects academic content to meaningful action. We believe a strong connection with nature is essential to the holistic development of our students. Through environmental education integrated across the curriculum, students develop ecological literacy, stewardship skills, and a lasting sense of respect, curiosity, and joy for nature.

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For the past 18 years, Evergreen’s Earth Garden has served as a cornerstone of this work. The space includes a mixture of raised and in-ground beds, a green-built tool shed with an attached covered outdoor classroom space, and an outdoor kitchen with a sink and tables for prep and shared meals. Although much of the original design remains intact, the garden requires ongoing repairs and cleanup following the hurricane. Evergreen continues to steward this space through dedication of students, educators, parent volunteers, village interns, and community partners.

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Grant support will allow students, under adult supervision, to actively participate in garden restoration efforts, including repairing beds, clearing storm debris, replenishing soil, repainting parts of the tool shed, and preparing planting areas for crops designated by teachers, the Nutrition Director, and our community partners.

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Purpose:

The purpose of this project is to restore and revitalize the Evergreen Earth Garden, an 18-year cornerstone of experiential learning, following the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The garden has historically served as a central hub for interdisciplinary instruction, environmental stewardship, outdoor education, and community engagement. Rehabilitating this space will allow Evergreen to return to its core practice of integrating real-world, place-based education across K–8 curriculum while preparing to supply food for the school’s new kitchen opening in the spring of 2026.

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Physical work to be accomplished with student involvement during the restoration phase includes repairing current beds, updating signage, replenishing planting soil, and removing debris accumulated from Hurricane Helene. Some of this is vegetative debris but also includes broken items such as buckets, signs, watering cans, tools, and debris deposited from other places on campus as a temporary resting ground.

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Key Learnings:

Through this project, students will deepen their understanding of:

1. Ecology, soil science, and climate resilience
Students will investigate soil health, storm impacts, and gardening practices. They will gain experience in data collection, habitat restoration, and ecosystem monitoring, mirroring practices used in professional conservation work. By repairing beds, amending soils, planting relevant and nutritious food and flowers, and trimming fruit-bearing bushes, students will develop a practical understanding of how food moves from soil to table. They will explore concepts of seasonality, seed selection, pollination, composting, and the role of native plants, applying standards-aligned STEM practices.

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2. Problem solving and stewardship
Students will apply real-world skills to restore garden infrastructure. The work integrates measurement, tools, design thinking, and collaborative problem solving. Evergreen’s fourth grade has dedicated time in their school day to visioning the garden’s future and how they intend to help.

Students will also examine issues of environmental stewardship after natural disasters, the understanding of ecological resilience, and the time it takes to heal our hearts and our land. Students will come to appreciate the importance of responsibility and shared spaces as the collective when widespread disaster hits.

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3. Character, Crew Culture, and Community Service
Consistent with Evergreen’s EL Education model, students will practice perseverance, teamwork, and service leadership. They will experience firsthand the role of civic engagement and community building through the garden.

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Impact on Students:

This project will benefit every K–8 student at Evergreen and provide differentiated learning experiences. Hands-on education, outdoor, experiential learning has students reintegrating foundational garden skills such as planting, harvesting, cooking, and ecological stewardship into their expeditionary curriculum, crew, and service learning educational components.

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Students engage in place-based learning to improve knowledge across STEM, literacy, environmental science, and sustainability education. The revival of one of our outdoor classrooms puts the students as investors. Students will consistently apply grade-level NC Science Standards in an authentic, outdoor context. Additionally, writing, reading, and communication skills are reinforced through field notebooks, reflections, observational sketches, design sketches, and crew discussions.

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The garden is also a place visited every day by students eating lunch outside. It is a place students can go to wonder, pick berries, and relax during recess. A thriving garden supports students’ well-being, which is of particular importance as our community recovers from the impacts of Hurricane Helene.