Farm to School Summit spotlights Dunwoody

Dunwoody High School senior Danny Kanso  - and the ambitious Grow Dunwoody organic gardening initiative he founded and directs - drew special praise Friday at the third annual Georgia Organics Farm to School Summit in Columbus.

Grow Dunwoody, which the community has embraced, was created as a way to improve the cohesion of Farm to School (F2S) programs among the city’s eight schools, Kanso told a summit workshop on case studies of effective F2S advocacy at the school, community and state level.

“We are 100 percent student led,” Kanso said. Our motivation was “to get students what they wanted based on our own desire for hands-on experience with things such as observing photosynthesis instead of just reading about it.”

The way students decided to do that, Kanso continued, was to create organic gardens at schools that didn’t have them and support the schools that already had gardens. The goal, he said, was to use the gardens as a way to teach curriculum - history and math as well as science, wellness and special needs - in a real-life setting.

To gain support for their vision, the students went to and gained the backing of the principal at various school, Kanso said. They then won the endorsement of the Dunwoody mayor and city manager. They also partnered with Grow Dunwoody, which counts producing renewable classroom and community resources and instilling sustainable values in the student bodies among its goals. Grow Dunwoody works with the Chamber of Commerce, homeowner associations, a community college, parks and other entities.

Kanso, who was assisted at the workshop by fellow senior and Grow Dunwoody Assistant Director Robert Galerstein, then led the attendees through a five-step process to create a locally based F2S program at their school.

John Turenne, president of Sustainable Food Systems in Wallingford, Conn., singled out Kanso in the day’s final wrap-up session for the local group's carefully thought-out five-step program, for student participation and for tying in all of the community’s resources.

Rebecca Wallace of the Atlanta Farm to School coalition also praised Kanso “for remembering to involve the kids.”

Two other Dunwoody presenters at the workshop, parent volunteers Angela Renals and Elizabeth Davis, also gave an inspirational presentation about the organic gardens they started at Chesnut Charter School and how they incorporated those into the F2S program.

Davis talked about how she and Renals were at the bus stop one day when they hatched the idea of creating a program at Chesnut Elementary that would have the mission of making the school community stewards of the school and the environment.

That led to the creation of an ecology club, an outdoor garden classroom and incorporating the F2S program into the culture of the entire school.

Renals talked about the importance of gaining support from teachers and cafeteria and county nutrition staff in getting an F2S program up and running.

If first impressions really do matter, visitors to the Donaldson-Bannister farm are in for a treat.

Some of the approximately 400 daylilies that have been dug up from Ashford Dunwoody street corners are being made available to the historic property through the Perimeter Center Improvement Districts.

The Master Gardeners who are assigned to the property and have done a yeoman’s job in clearing and beautifying the grounds, are planning on flanking the entrance to the farm on Chamblee Dunwoody Road with some of them and planting others along the small stone wall in front of the house.

Master Gardeners Penny Bhim, the lead Master Gardener for the property, and Janet Hanser and Dunwoody Preservation Trust member Linda Shulin met at the farm early one morning last week to consider options for where to plant the flowers.

“The goal is to have color at the entrance,” Bhim said.

The discussion about the daylilies kicked off at a volunteer work day at the farm.

The Master Gardeners are trying to finish as much work as possible before mid-April, Bhim said. Once the vegetables are planted, she said, virtually all of the Master Gardeners’ efforts will go into growing and harvesting the produce, which they will donate to the Community Assistance Center in Sandy Springs.

The volunteers were joined by Master Gardeners Nancy Baldwin, Dick Langway and Rosanne Lutz. During the rest of the work day they weeded, moved roses and took soil samples from the vegetable garden for pH testing.

“Thank heavens for the Master Gardeners,” Shulin said. “They have saved this place!”

A first-time DeKalb County urban agriculture meeting was held at the Clarkston Community Center last week.

The meeting was hosted by Global Growers Network, Atlanta Local Food Initiative (ALFI), Georgia Organics, Slow Food Atlanta and the Clarkston Community Center. Susan Pavlin of Global Growers chaired the meeting.

A diverse group of approximately two dozen urban farmers, representatives of the DeKalb Board of Health, garden designers, educators, graduate students from Emory University and concerned backyard gardeners attended the meeting. David and Muriel Knope represented the Dunwoody Community Garden.

The goal was to focus on two topics, Pavlin announced at the start of the meeting.

The first topic was the county Board of Health, which is writing a policy paper on urban agriculture. It makes sense to get recommendations from the people who are actually growing the food, Pavlin said.

The new policy would affect unincorporated portions of the county. For cities such as Dunwoody, the goal would be to “encourage cities to adopt complimentary policies so that all residents would have uniform and equal access to a permissive urban agricultural policy,” said Brandi Whitney, a prevention program specialist at the Board of Health.

The second topic was the zoning code. The county is working on a new code that will affect urban agriculture, Pavlin said.

The county plan is to have the new code in place by the summer of 2013, which means any input to how the new code would read would need to be submitted by this summer, Pavlin said. What she wanted to get from the meeting, she explained, was a first look at input from growers to help shape that code.

The current county code, Whitney said, does not allow vegetable gardens in front or side yards. They can only be in back yards.