This spring, parents, teachers, and friends gathered on the Marin Waldorf School campus for the Spring Art Show & Auction. It was lovely evening, filled with live music, delicious wine from McIlroy Cellars, and wonderful company! And, of course, the auction itself, which featured this year’s class projects, which were created with love by our school’s students, parents, and teachers.

This year, 100% of the proceeds from these beautiful keepsakes are benefiting our school’s biodynamic teaching garden, which will be getting a needed upgrade.

Please read more about our plans for the garden below!

Here, look in the garden bed,

Something beautiful is growing,

Bright, shaped like a cup all red,

Tulip opens to the sun.

Last night it was small and green,

Flame-like, now it is a-glowing,

This one is the first I’ve seen,

Now sweet weather has begun.

This fall, the Pedagogical Site and Gardening Committees began re-envisioning the biodynamic teaching garden at Marin Waldorf School. Many of the garden beds that had been lovingly built many years ago were rotting, and those rascally gophers had found their way through the wire mesh that for so long had kept them out, leaving a feast for those underground dwellers but not our hardworking students. There were other slow changes, such as the willow and Chinese tallow trees, which were growing larger and larger, casting large swaths of shade on beds whose plants were yearning for the sun. And so, just as nature is ever unfolding and growing, we decided it was time to rethink how the school garden is used for nature study, botany, reflection, will activity. and, on a practical level, to grow crops the children can plant from seed, watch grow, and harvest.

To meet those new needs, planning has been underway with these two school committees. We decided to add more garden beds (built from reclaimed wood by the 5th grade) in sunny areas of the garden, and are working with the 8th grade to prepare the shadier areas (where humans love to rest) for outdoor classroom/presentation space/picnic tables. Currently all newly built beds are teeming with three-sisters crops: tomatoes, greens, peppers, cucumbers, beans, onions and peas. The 5th grade has just built a biodynamic compost pile outside the garden, and fruit trees they pruned last fall are filled with fruit. The 2nd graders have been preparing beds, planting potatoes, creating trellises for the cucumbers to climb, harvesting lemons and pulling weeds. It is a beehive of activity!

Looking forward, we would like to see the garden thrive in the following ways:

Expanded biodynamic gardening programs across grades levels, giving students an opportunity to learn and spend time in the school garden
A new outdoor classroom, presentation space, and picnic area in the shade of the garden trees.
Construction of a new perimeter fence, with an expansion of the garden boundaries beyond the apple tree corner
Installation of two new garden gates for the south and west entrances
Installation of a new tall, shallow greenhouse for seed starts
An updated irrigation system for the new garden beds, fruit trees, and perimeter beds, and removal of the current irrigation system in the shaded areas
Additional handmade garden beds made from recycled lumber

Our garden working verse:

I slept and I dreamt that life was joyful

I woke and I found that life was work

I worked and I found that life was joyful

– Rabindranath Tagor

Thank you to all the students, parents, and staff who helped to create our beautiful auction items in support of the campus garden, and to everyone who placed a bid in the Spring 2024 Silent Auction! You’re helping our garden grow. Didn’t attend the auction? We invite you to make a contribution to the campus garden project, you can do so here or at the link below.

Support the garden

Our Garden Grows: An Update on Our Campus Garden