Students will investigate natural resources and collaboratively design a safe, productive garden that supplies fresh vegetables and spices for cooking within the facility. They will break the challenge into manageable parts, including crop selection, growing conditions, space, cost, safety, maintenance, and aesthetics. Teams will build and evaluate design prototypes, weigh social and environmental trade-offs, and revise their solutions using feedback. Their work will address the question: How can we design and grow a safe, productive garden that provides fresh vegetables and spices for cooking inside our juvenile facility?

Students will investigate: How can we design and grow a safe, productive garden that provides fresh vegetables and spices for cooking inside our juvenile facility? They will analyze plant needs and available natural resources, then break the challenge into manageable problems involving space, light, water, soil, crop selection, and maintenance. Teams will develop, test, and evaluate garden plans using prioritized criteria and trade-offs such as cost, safety, reliability, aesthetics, and social, cultural, and environmental impacts. Students will share decisions, resolve disagreements, use feedback to revise their work, and clearly present a feasible garden design and care plan.

Teams will create a site and resource audit, plant research profiles, and a shared list of criteria and constraints for a safe, productive garden. They will develop and compare scaled design sketches, planting plans, budgets, maintenance schedules, and risk assessments that address cost, safety, reliability, aesthetics, and environmental impact. During growing, students will maintain observation logs documenting plant health, resource use, team decisions, feedback, and design revisions. The final products will include an approved garden installation or model, healthy vegetables and spices when ready for harvest, a facility-safe care and harvest guide, and a presentation explaining how the design supports cooking inside the facility.

Begin with a supervised “garden design challenge walk,” where teams examine the available space, sunlight, water access, security rules, and safe tool options. Students inspect familiar packaged vegetables and spices used in facility recipes, then identify which crops might grow successfully without tasting any samples. Ask, “How can we design and grow a safe, productive garden that provides fresh vegetables and spices for cooking inside our juvenile facility?” Teams create quick site sketches, prioritize criteria such as cost, safety, productivity, reliability, and aesthetics, and share one promising idea and one key constraint.

Host an on-site “Garden Design Showcase” for peers, facility staff, food-service staff, and approved community partners. Teams present a scale model or planted prototype, growing plan, and recipe-use guide while answering, “How can we design and grow a safe, productive garden that provides fresh vegetables and spices for cooking inside our juvenile facility?” Visitors provide feedback on cost, safety, reliability, aesthetics, resource use, and social or environmental impact. Students conclude by explaining team decisions, trade-offs, individual contributions, and improvements they would make before implementation.