MOUNT DESERT — Betsy Minott, a teacher at the Mount Desert Elementary School in Northeast Harbor, received the Garden Club of America’s (GCA) Elizabeth Abernathy Hull Award for environmental education, given “to recognize an individual who, through working with children under 16 years of age in horticulture and the environment, has inspired their appreciation of the beauty and fragility of the planet.”
The award was presented at the Garden Club of Mount Desert’s June meeting by Elly Andrews, Ann Judd and Cammie Disston. These garden club members had worked closely with Minott to put together an educational exhibit for the 2019 GCA Annual Meeting in Boston that highlights the students’ work through cross-curricular activities utilizing the greenhouse and Growing Gardens-Growing Minds program.
Growing Gardens-Growing Minds is a community-based greenhouse project designed to use school gardens to provide healthy and nutritional foods, build community connections and enhance educational experiences through a series of rich and diverse opportunities.
The program has been successful with grades K-8, supporting learning across the curriculum including math, science, Spanish, writing, social studies and Art. Other greenhouse projects include a summer pollinator garden, a blog on such topics as frost studies and composting, poems and menus inspired by the greenhouse bounty.
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