A World-Class Gardening Sanctuary for Children Amid the Concrete of Sherman Heights

It was by chance that Christina Abuelo, a Rhode Island native, found herself an academic home with her three boys in one of San Diego’s underprivileged elementary schools. Here she launched the unprecedented beginnings of a food movement that would change the trajectory of outdoor education and the lives of hundreds of children at Sherman Elementary.

After a couple conversations and a visit to the school, it became clear to me that the eight-years-strong garden with 15 raised beds, three composting stations, garden-based cooking workshops, annual spring garden festivals, and a teaching platform for the city’s top nature educators existed not by chance. Abuelo planted a seed that blossomed into a garden-based education sanctuary that rivals some of the city’s best garden programs.

“We literally hand-watered our budding oasis one donated garden bed at a time,” Abuelo shared. “What started from a single bed in 2010 grew to a magnificent oasis built by generations of students.”

But all programs come with a cost. Where most schools use grants and curriculum budgets to support garden programs, Sherman Elementary, with a student body comprised of over 90% socioeconomically disadvantaged students, relies entirely on donations, parents, community volunteers, and Abuelo’s relentless efforts to keep the garden overflowing with real-world learning opportunities.

Soil testing, vermiculture, mulching, and composting are just a taste of the horticultural activities at Sherman’s ever-growing garden club. The vibrant outdoor learning center provides a rotating curriculum of gardening, nature-based art, cooking, and environmental science, with guest educators ranging from beekeepers and mushroom growers to chefs and certified nutritionists.

Even beyond the garden Abuelo takes what she likes to call a guerrilla-like approach to education with spontaneous pop-ins to classrooms whenever nature has a lesson to share. During my visit, Abuelo explained the life cycle of four adorable self-incubated chicks that hatched just the day before.

And let me tell you, the crowd of second graders went wild!

Through Abuelo’s passionate persistence for change, and a heart of solid gold, the Sherman Elementary School garden serves not only as a vehicle for outdoor education, but truly as an urban oasis that continues to create happy, healthy, nature-connected kids year after year.