Science in the Garden

The garden provides ample opportunity for making science inviting and relevant to students’ lives by inspiring active exploration and problem solving. The garden encourages inquiry as students use their senses, reasoning, and communication skills to find answers to questions. These experiences can help improve students’ attitude toward science. Key science concepts that can be explored in the garden include organisms, cycles, basic requirements for life, plant anatomy, adaptations, food webs, decomposition, interdependence, ecological principles, pollination, and diversity of life. Students practice and hone scientific process skills by observing, classifying, inferring, measuring, predicting, organizing and interpreting data, forming hypotheses, and identifying variables. 

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Below are a few ideas for life, physical, and earth science activities in the classroom garden:

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Life Science

• What are the differences between living and nonliving things? How are humans like plants? How are they different? Distinguish and describe differences and similarities.

• How does a plant grow? Observe the life cycles of plants using fast-growing plants in your classroom.

• What do plants need to grow? Do all plants need the same things? Study the vari- ous conditions that different plants need to grow. Compare the things people need to the things plants need. Create experiments investigating what happens when plants are exposed to different amounts of light, water, air, space, and nutrients.

• Investigate the functions of different plant structures (cotyledons, roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds).

• How do plants reproduce? How do seeds work? Dissect flowers and seeds. What factors influence germination of seeds? Create experiments to investigate how light, heat, and moisture affect germination.

• Explain to students that some characteristics are inherited and others are caused by the environment. Locate examples of both in your garden.

• How do plants use energy from the sun to make food? Discuss photosynthe- sis. Do plants need light to photosynthesize?

• Discuss how plants adapt for survival. Research adaptations of seeds for dispersal and adaptations of flowers for attracting pollinators. Observe pollinators in the garden.

• Investigate the impact of environmental changes on plants.

• Study wildlife and insects along with their habitats.

• Investigate food chains and webs. Demonstrate how plants are theprimary source of energy for all food chains.

Earth Science

• Create a garden weather station. Record daily measurements and compare conditions with plant growth.

• How are some soils different from others? Compare and contrast the properties of different types of soils (density, air spaces, presence of living organisms, composition, texture, smell, appearance).

• Simulate soil erosion in your classroom garden. Observe the differ- ence in soil loss when water is splashed on a tilted, planted pot, and on a tilted, unplanted (but soil-filled) pot.

Physical Science

• What is pH? How does it affect plants? Use litmus paper or a test kit to test the pH of different soils. Investigate how plants respond to soils with different pH levels.

• Simulate the water cycle in the indoor garden by covering it with a “dome” of clear plastic. Study and observe the transpiration, evapora- tion, and condensation of water.

• What are the properties of different types of light? Cover pots with cellophane of different colors to screen out all but one wavelength of light from plants. Observe plant growth.

• How does energy change to matter during photosynthesis?

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​Source: California School Garden Network: Gardens for Learning