Art in the Garden

[Regi Jones]

Hi everyone, Happy Monday!

I’m looking for resources on Art in the Garden and was wondering if anyone here has lesson plans, standards connections, or project ideas that you’ve used with students to connect them to art in the garden. If you know someone who’s an expert in this area, I’d love an introduction as well.

Send anything my way—thank you!

[Tonia Scherer]

HI, Regi!

I enjoyed digging through Cornell University's Art in the Garden resources a couple years ago when I was planning a class using Art in the Garden!

Below I attached a screenshot from a slide from an old presentation I made that connected art in the garden to some standards. It was for MO standards and might be outdated, but might give you a place to start.

Some of my favorite art activities to do in the garden include: 

-making cordage from plant stem and leaf fibers

-taking an old large picture frame (or making a frame) then turning it into a loom with string and allowing students to weave items from the garden in it

-creating "pound" printings by pounding the natural pigment out of flowers and leaves onto card stock

-making natural dyes from fruits, veggies, and flowers in the garden

-making impermanent mandalas by collecting items from the garden and placing them in patterns on the ground of other surfaces in the garden

-mud painting

-making cyanotype "sun" prints with items from the garden

-making paint from veggies (This one we had a local expert come out and guide us through. We made orange paint from carrots which was pretty neat!)

I love using the garden for art projects!

Enjoy!

Tonia

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Tonia Scherer

Director of Schools

she/her
Phone: 314.588.9600 ext. 114 

Seed St. Louis  

Food Freedom For All

www.seedstl.org/donate

[Illene Pevec]

What age group?

Illène Pevec, PhD

970-274-1622

Growing a Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health and Joy,  published by New Village Press, 2016

"Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it. Begin it now! "
Goethe

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[Hope Gribble]

Hi Regi!

I do a lot of art in the garden. Here are some activities that the students have enjoyed:

-Nature Prints on canvas or paper (dip leaves of different sizes and textures in paint and stamp with them)

-Making corn husk dolls with burr oak acorn caps for hats

-Creating a map of the garden. Our middle school students each created one segment of this map of our Permaculture Orchard.

-Seed Design Challenge, using found objects

-Creating suncatchers with leaves and flowers placed between two pieces of clear contact paper (can make a paper frame or do a small one using a mason jar lid as frame)

-Making gourd rattles (will do this winter, haven't yet)

-Making monarch butterflies by folding a piece of paper in half, drawing half of the butterfly with black glue (emlers with black paint mixed in), folding the paper to create the mirror image. When dry, it can be painted. Another option that doesn't require folding/mirroring is to use elmers glue to draw the outline of an insect or plant on black construction paper. After it dries, use chalk pastel to color it in.

-Using old pieces of fabric (squares cut from old T shirts) to create flags. We painted chickens and flowers on them, stapled the top of the flag to a rope and hung the ropes with flags in our chicken run (tied in center, then each rope extending to edges). It was part of a materials reuse + beautification project. The flags have hung for 2 years; starting to fade now.

-As Tonia mentioned, creating temporary mandalas, natural dyes, pounding plants and flowers into watercolor paper bookmarks have all worked well), plus LifeLab's fabulous Rainbow Chips and ABC's of Scientific Drawings

Have fun!
Hope Gribble

[Elaine Makarevich]

Hi Regi,

Thank you so much for sharing your interest in Art in the Garden—what a brilliant way to spark creativity and connection with nature! I want to share SubjectToClimate (StC), a free and teacher-generated nonprofit platform offering hundreds of lesson plans, activities, and units that weave together art, climate, sustainability, and environmental topics. I've written some of the lessons and currently serve as the Director of State Leads! (We have 8 State Hubs which are connected to the core StC site!) 

I also organized and taught in our school garden for nearly a decade and have lots of ideas that I can share with you! (I'll share some ideas below as a starting point!)

• Visit the garden, collect nature items, and use them to create a piece of art. (plant people)
• Use clipboards and pencils to draw every time you visit the garden space!
• Draw or paint a garden map.
• Garden stones - we used them to paint and mark our plantings.
• Our art teacher had the art club paint larger stepping stones to place around the garden and greenhouse.
• Students created signs and labels for plantings.
• Shoebox project - use "found" art materials (magazine pictures, buttons, ribbons, etc) to create an "outside" box. Inside, we kept a small notepad and colored pencils to use for journaling anytime we went outside.
• Garden Journals - students can create using a variety of artistic media and skills.

Here are some art-centered lessons from our database that are ripe for adaptation to a garden-inspired theme:

• Climate Change Art Project Ideas – Students explore how visual art can inspire environmental action in ways that data alone cannot. 

• Art Unit: Animals and the Changing Climate – Students explore the impact of climate change on wildlife in New Jersey and create artworks reflecting those changes. SubjectToClimate

•   Search results for "art" lessons 

•   Search results for "garden" lessons 

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You can also dive into our full collection of environment-related resources here. 

Feel free to reach out with any questions or if there's another way I can assist you.

Warmly,
Elaine

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Elaine Makarevich (she, her)   Director of State Leads   (973)534-7100 elaine.m...@subjecttoclimate.org

Check out our website here!

[Arlene Marturano]

Good Morning Regi,   

  

            Below are several Art in the Garden ideas I have used with teachers and student groups:

Many children's books spur art projects.

* Miss Hickory by Carolyn Bailey - Make Miss Hickory dolls with hickory nuts, twigs, fall leaves, bark, moss, acorns. Make Miss Hickory's corn cob house with acorn dishes, cups and saucers.

*Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin by Marguerite Henry - tells the story of how Native Americans taught America's first portrait painter how to grind different colors of soil to make paint with bear grease. Students can make soil paint murals of their schoolyard and garden. The activity alerts students to the many colors of soil right beneath their feet.

*Planting A Rainbow by Lois Ehlert encourages children to do just that!

*Many plants have the potential for tie-dye art - indigo, saffron, acorns, walnut shells, dandelion roots, sassafras leaves, pokeweed berries, Asiatic dayflower....

*Wreathmaking is also a garden art using grape, wisteria, willow, or coral honeysuckle as the framework and adding berries, seeds, and cones to decorate.

*Eggshells can be used to introduce students to the ancient art of Ikebana by creating floral arrangements within each shell. See attached image.

*Pounding leaves and flowers is an art as well. We use muslin and watercolor paper to carry the image and a hammer to transfer the image of balloon flower, caladium, coleus, coreopsis, cosmos, dianthus, ferns, zebrina hollyhock, petunia, marigold, zinnia - experiment! See leaf image attached.

See Laura Martin's book The Art and Craft of Pounding Flowers. 

*Growing a Floral Clock is a living scented timepiece students can create in the garden. 

My book Growing Up Gardening:Gateways to Gardening with Children will be published this fall and includes many art and craft activities for children. 

          The outdoor learning initiative at Green Schoolyards website provides art in the garden lessons at

https://www.greenschoolyards.org/blog/2020/3/20/bringing-schoolyard-outdoor-learning-home

          We appreciate your interest in including art as part of garden education.

Sincerely,

Arlene Marturano, Ph.D.

Director, South Carolina Garden-based Learning Network

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