Bashas', Food City, Dole Award Learning Garden to Phoenix Elementary School

Bashas’, Food City and Dole Packaged Foods have teamed up to award two elementary schools with a Captain Planet Foundation Learning Garden. Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary School in Phoenix was nominated over the summer and selected this fall to win the first-ever contest.

The Learning Garden, valued at $2,500, comes complete with lesson kits, supplies to establish a schoolyard garden, a fully-equipped garden cooking cart and strategies for garden maintenance.

“We’re looking forward to the garden installation and program implementation at Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary School,” says Ashley Shick, director of communications and public affairs for Bashas’ and Food City supermarkets. “This is a wonderful opportunity for students to learn more about where their food comes from.”

The Learning Garden program provides a context for multidisciplinary learning, ranging from nutrition and science to social, studies, math and language arts. Students benefit by expanding their palates, taste-testing healthy foods and learning about food origins.

Installation of the Learning Garden is expected to take place next spring.

“The kids will really enjoy planting their gardens and seeing what wonderful items they will be able to grow and harvest,” says Larry White, VP of sales for Dole Packaged Foods.

Based on the critically acclaimed animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Captain Planet Foundation was created in 1991 by media mogul Ted Turner and producer Barbara Pyle. The foundation aims has funded more than 2,000 hands-on environmental education projects with schools and nonprofits to help ensure that the next generation of business leaders and policymakers are environmentally-literate citizens who leverage technology and information to manage and protect the air, land, and water.