Credit: Illustration by Leah Sharpe

Garza’s Gardens Program, Gonzalo Garza Independence High School

1600 Chicon, 414-8667

www.austinschools.org/campus/garza

Students/vegetables. Herbs/business. School/gardens. Responsibility/community. What do these terms have in common? A great deal, at Austin Independent School District’s alternative Garza High School in Central East Austin. Guided by teacher Martha Cason, Garza’s Gardens is a thriving multicredit study program helping students learn success and responsibility alongside economics, business, ecology, nutrition, and horticulture.

Begun nine years ago as a school-ground landscaping effort, Garza’s Gardens currently includes 22 vegetable plots and 16 herb beds where students grow organic vegetables and culinary herbs. Each student in the program is in charge of at least two plots; every semester the students research, select, plant, tend, and harvest their own crops.

The original idea was for garden produce to go to the school’s cafeteria, but due to AISD consolidation, Garza no longer has an autonomous kitchen; now vegetables are sent home with students or used for class cooking lessons donated by Austin’s Les Dames d’Escoffier. One of Cason’s goals is creating a viable campus lunch program using garden bounty, not only to feed students and staff but to serve as a community example for making tasty meals from local and nutritious ingredients.

The herb plots constitute the market garden; students apply basic economics to real-world business. Volunteers from Students in Free Enterprise at Texas State University mentor classes in accounting practices and marketing plans. Students grow, pick, and sell fresh herbs at the Triangle Farmers’ Market each Wednesday; money earned defrays business expenses, and the class “company” invests profit back into the program. Garza-grown herbs also go to St. Edward’s University food service and Farm to Table, a local, organic wholesaler that supplies Jeffrey’s and Aquarelle, among other Austin food venues.

Cason has big ideas for expanding Garza’s Gardens education and community opportunities. In addition to the garden/cafeteria enterprise, she’s planning to plant additional herb and veggie beds and fruit trees, rework the compost system, finish the greenhouse, develop a rainwater-harvesting system, and ultimately, build an atrium-greenhouse classroom. With expanded capacity, she envisions students providing produce, plant starts, and compost to community groups such as the Sustainable Food Center. “The donation of materials, money, or expertise would be gratefully appreciated,” Cason says. “I need a rainwater expert, for example. Complete materials for a raised garden bed cost around $250.” But, she says, “community support is the most valuable gift we could be given.” To make a donation to Garza’s Gardens, contact Martha Cason (414-8667, martha.cason@austin.isd.org). – MM Pack

This article appears in December 12 • 2008.

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Mick Vann is a retired Austin chef who is a food writer and restaurant critic, cookbook author, restaurant consultant, and recipe developer. He moonlights as a University of Texas horticulturist with a propensity for ethnic eats and international food, particularly of the Asian persuasion, but he also knows his way around a plate of soul food or barbecue.

MM Pack is a food writer/historian and private chef who divides her time between Austin and San Francisco. A regular contributor to The Austin Chronicle and Edible Austin, she’s been published in Gastronomica, The San Francisco Chronicle, Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America, Nation’s Restaurant News, Scribner's Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, The Dictionary of Culinary Biography, and Southern Foodways Alliance’s Cornbread Nation 1.

Mexico City native Claudia Alarcón has made Austin home since 1984. She worked her way through college in the local restaurant industry, graduating from the University of Texas in 1999. She has been a Chronicle contributor for 15 years and presents lectures and workshops on topics related to the foodways of Mexico, both locally and internationally.

Rachel Feit is an archaeologist by trade who worked her way through college in kitchens in Chicago and Austin before discovering that dishing up words was more satisfying that dishing up meals. She has been writing about food and restaurants for The Austin Chronicle for more than a decade, but still loves to cook.

Kate Thornberry worked in renowned Austin restaurants for 30 years while pursuing a reasonably successful career in music. She began contributing to the Chronicle in 1988 and became a regular contributor to the food section in 2006.