Muir Woods
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EDUCATION

Education is integrated into all we do in the nurseries.

The nurseries host a variety of educational programs to reach the widest audience possible. From corporate work days to student-centered lessons, our engagement with the community comes from a desire to open a window into growing native plants for restoration by providing an opportunity for personal investment in the park.

The nurseries provide a learning space to students of all ages (many of whom have never been to a national park!). We host service learning opportunities for children as young as preschool all the way through college, where students have the opportunity to learn by engaging in the processes of growing native plants, and contributing to the nurseries’ functions, while learning the importance of biodiversity to a healthy world.

The nurseries partner with other education programs within as well as outside the Parks Conservancy, enriching those programs with learning activities at the nurseries. Some of these programs include the Park Stewardship LINC Program, our own Restoration Youth Crew, the Student Conservation Association, Crissy Field Center’s Jr. Rangers summer camp, Americorps, and many others. In all of these programs, the groups are helping the nurseries to restore a shadow of a once vibrant landscape while learning the ecological principles that are the basis for the restoration efforts. The students gain a sense that today they have made a difference, and that they have the power to contribute towards a positive change in their community if they gain the tools they need.

Adrian making observations in the garden at Presidio Nursery

Highlighted Program: One signature educational program offered at the Presidio Nursery is called Petal Pushers, a program designed by Nursery educators to connect knee-high naturalists to nature and ecology. This program works in partnership with San Francisco Unified School District, maintaining science content and performance standards while providing an outdoor classroom experience to local students. Instead of using lecturing as the basis of learning, Petal Pushers uses inquiry as a method of engagement, where the students learn by the feel of a leaf, the smell of a flower, and the shape of a seed in order to grasp the overall gestalt of a plant and its habitat. Through this method of inquiry as well as by using the Scientific Method, students learn about indigenous plants and their life-cycles, including how they are pollinated, how they disperse their seed, and other adaptations they have evolved to survive their local environment.

  

Bring Your Students!

Find out more about curricula-based programs in the Plant Nurseries and how to bring your students out to:

  • Petal Pushers: offered at the Presidio Nursery, designed primarily for 2nd and 3rd graders
  • Here’s the Dirt: offered at Presidio or Marin Headlands Nurseries, geared towards middle school students
  • Service learning opportunities at all of our nurseries for students of any age!

Contact the nursery closest to your school: