Growing Together: Youth-Led Garden Competition

Green space, park access, and trees

South LA Central LA West LA LAUSD (select only if you have a district-wide partnership) City of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a citywide benefit) County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Many Los Angeles schools, especially in low-income communities, lack access to green space, fresh food, and hands-on learning. This inequity contributes to poor health, academic disengagement, and limited opportunities for youth leadership. While garden programs exist, many fail long-term because teachers aren’t given the time, training, or support to sustain them, leaving gardens to fall into disrepair. While teaching in South LA, our founder, Bari Applebaum, saw these challenges firsthand and transformed an abandoned garden into a vibrant learning hub. Since 2017, Chicas Verdes has built and revitalized gardens at four schools and engaged over 1,750 students in garden-based education. Now, we’re launching a citywide Gardening Challenge and training teachers to scale this proven model, ensuring gardens thrive and serve as lasting tools for health, learning, and community.

The Chicas Verdes Gardening Challenge will launch a citywide competition to support the creation or revitalization of five student-led school gardens during the 2025–2026 school year. Each site will receive a garden starter kit, design support, mentorship, and access to our after-school curriculum rooted in environmental justice, STEAM, storytelling, and community organizing.
Students will engage in project-based learning: growing food, leading community events, and advocating for green space. A citywide showcase will celebrate their work, and the most innovative, sustainable, and community-driven gardens will win hydroponic systems for their school and media recognition.
A comprehensive rubric will measure outcomes such as pounds of produce grown, student participation, and community engagement. Additional criteria include design, composting, water conservation, curricular integration, student leadership, pollinator support, and long-term maintenance plans.
The competition will be judged by professionals in sustainability, education, and landscape design, ensuring equity, creativity, and environmental stewardship remain central.
This initiative doesn’t just grow gardens, it grows young leaders, healthier schools, and greener, more just neighborhoods across Los Angeles.

If successful, this initiative will transform school campuses into thriving ecosystems and equip youth to be lifelong stewards of their communities. Students, especially those in neighborhoods most impacted by environmental injustice, will gain hands-on experience growing food, leading community events, and advocating for access to green space and the resources they need to live healthy lives. These experiences build confidence, leadership, and connection to land and community. Over time, our model will scale across Los Angeles, shifting how schools and communities invest in wellness, sustainability, and youth voice. By 2030, we aim to support 20+ campuses, activating thousands of students to grow food, build green infrastructure, and reimagine what’s possible in their neighborhoods, making Los Angeles healthier, more equitable, and more resilient from the ground up.