Cleveland Public Schools

Beginning in 1904 and for most of the twentieth century until the 1980s, the innovative Cleveland Public Schools Horticulture Program educated several generations of children from kindergarten through high school age, across many subject areas through gardening lessons. The program ran year-round as the active gardening took place in the summer "vacation" period. Some schools had "tract gardens" on-site and students would be able to tend their own garden plot on school grounds under the watchful eye of a garden teacher who would grade each garden.

Students who did not attend a school with a tract garden could take part in the home gardening program. With the help of parents and one or two summer visits by a teacher who would grade the gardens, home gardeners participated in the same sort of activities as tract gardeners like the garden exhibits, the Cuyahoga County Fair and the city-wide garden awards programs every fall. The most significant legacies of the Cleveland Public Schools Horticulture program were the gardeners themselves. At present day there is a vocational horticulture high school in Cleveland called the Washington Park Horticulture Center. Although the system-wide CPSHP ended in the 1980s, some of these former school tract garden sites became community garden sites that are still in use today.

From the guide to the Cleveland Public Schools Horticulture Program collection, 1904-1988, (Cleveland State University)