Seeds for Education

More Information:
Seeds for Education Grants
Next Generation
A Tapestry of Learning
SFE Success Stories

The Wild Ones Seeds for Education Program (SFE) began in 1996 and was named in honor of naturalist and Wild Ones inspirational leader Lorrie Otto, a pioneer in the natural landscaping movement in the United States. The program is a coordinated effort between national WIld Ones and its chapters and encompasses all of Wild Ones' efforts associated with educational institutions.

Nationally Wild Ones provides direction for local chapter SFE programs, acts as a clearinghouse for questions and concerns about SFE, provides materials for Wild Ones Chapters and others to use, and administers the Lorrie Otto Seeds for Education Grant Program.

Locally each Wild Ones chapter SFE Committee organizes and supports community efforts to establish natural areas of learning and works with local schools and other places of learning to make them aware of the grant program.

The Wild Ones mission to educate and share information about the benefits of natural landscaping using native species to promote biodiversity and environmentally sound practices is the perfect springboard for our members to interact with the community. As Wild Ones chapters and members see the results of their native landscaping, they start to look around the community and begin to see areas that should be naturally landscaped. Educational facilities are one of the best areas to promote natural landscaping. Considering the costs involved not only in materials, but also labor, why should they mow acres and acres of grass when they could have a school natural area to use as an outdoor learning center?

Consider, too, that in some sense environmental education is the very basis of an education. The most basic definition of education is: "that taught by members of a culture to the next generation to allow that culture to continue." To be sustained, our culture is dependent on the Earth. If we cannot teach our children to live sustainably on this Earth, eventually our culture will disappear and our educational system will have failed us.

The focus our chapter SFE committees use in successfully establishing long lasting school natural areas specifically can be remembered by using the acronym PLUMES.

P – Parents Involve the parents and neighbors

L – Lesson Plans It is one thing to have a nice school natural area, and another to have the teachers utilize its potential.

U – Us! The local chapter of the Wild Ones serves as a source of volunteers and knowledge about how to plant and maintain the natural area.

M – Maintenance staff. These folks need to be on board.

E – Educators Include several core teachers and the principal.

S – Students! The kids need to be involved in the all aspects from the idea and the design to the planting and maintenance, and then finally in the use of the natural area.

Ideally each school has a natural area committee composed of members of the groups described in PLUMES.

Lesson Plans There has been increasing pressure to teach to the standardized tests that do not contain environmental questions. It is becoming difficult for a teacher to justify time spent in a natural area. The key is to use the area to teach other core subjects using the plants and insects as hands-on learning. For example, the art class could sketch the flowers and the math class could calculate the germination rate of seeds.

The ultimate example of this is an environmental charter school which uses the environment and natural areas as an organizing theme around which an integrated, hands-on curriculum is built to teach the core subjects. The State of Wisconsin has four of which we are aware; Illinois has at least two. Our national SFE Director, Steve Maassen sits on the board of one at his daughter's school in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. If the idea of an environmental charter school is successful in demonstrating improved learning, then this concept will receive justification and more funds to disseminate this way of teaching.

Developing natural areas and outdoor learning centers, however, doesn't have to be left to Wild Ones and its members. Wherever you, the reader of this webpage, live you can contact your local school PTO officers and the principals of your schools to let them know that you support integrated, natural landscaping, science based learning. Then show your support by volunteering to work to maintain the outdoor learning center and/or by helping with the hands on activities in their natural area.

"Without good science we are ignorant, ignorant of the relationship between thistles and painted ladies, between frogs and pesticides, between ourselves and the natural world around us. And, that could be deadly." -- Janice Cook

Every school needs a nature trail and every person -- adult or young -- needs a bit of wilderness if wonder, reverence and awe are to be cultivated. William O. Douglas, former Justice of the Supreme Court

Photograph copyright © David Borneman.