On a recent sunny school day, fourth-grade students at Old Hammondtown ventured outside and got their hands dirty exploring their school garden. With guidance from Nathan Sander, an educator at the Marion Institute, they participated in a harvest taste test, investigated the soil, learned about square gardens, and pulled garlic from the soil.
The monthly hands-on gardening sessions are part of the Marion Institute’s farm-to-school program Grow Education. Old Hammondtown students — as well as students from Sippican School in Marion and Rochester Memorial School in Rochester — plant, grow, and taste produce right on their school grounds. For the Old Hammondtown students, the next session will include hands-on work with garlic planting and soil fertility as the garden changes with the season.
Sippican began participating in Grow Education during the 2023-24 school year. Old Hammondtown and Rochester Memorial joined during the 2025-26 school year, according to Sander, the Grow Education program manager.
Last school year, the program reached 166 Tri-Town students: 51 at Sippican, 54 at Old Hammondtown, and 61 at Rochester Memorial.
Grow Education focuses primarily on third- and fourth-grade students. Sander said students participate in hands-on school garden workshops in the fall and spring, with classroom lessons during the winter. The gardens extend the classroom, with students learning about soil, plants, climate, nutrition and growing food while applying subjects including science, math and social studies. Students also learn about agriculture and the regional food system.
“We are thrilled to partner with the Marion Institute’s Grow Education Program to bring these meaningful, hands-on learning experiences to our students throughout the year!” the Old Rochester Regional School District superintendent’s office said in a press release.
Grow Education now operates in 27 schools in seven Southeastern Massachusetts school districts. The total increased this fall with the addition of three schools in Fall River. The program includes taste tests and cafeteria food-waste audits, and the Marion Institute works with school food-service staff to increase local food procurement.
Grow Education is also designed to build schools’ capacity to sustain much of the work on their own. During the program’s first two years, the Marion Institute provides support including garden installation, professional teacher development and curriculum programming.
The school program is one part of the Marion Institute’s broader effort to connect communities with the food grown and harvested in the region.
That effort was also the subject of the Institute’s September 24 Southeastern Massachusetts Food Summit, where it presented preliminary findings from a food-system assessment covering six counties.
The assessment found strengths in nutrition education and access to fresh and local food, while identifying gaps in areas including emergency food planning, getting locally produced food into schools and other institutions, and support for new farmers.
Other Marion Institute programs include Frogfoot Farm, which grows fresh produce for food relief organizations, and Fields to Families. This gleaning program works with farmers to harvest surplus crops for distribution to nearby food pantries. The South Coast Food Policy Council works on broader regional food-system issues.
“Within these programs, we’re really connecting food back to the community and trying to rebuild the food system and increase food access in our region,” Christine Smith, program coordinator for the Marion Institute Southcoast Food Policy Council, told The Wanderer.
By Jeanne Hopkins