Fall 2025 | Edible Notables

Taught by Nature

Elementary school students get a food education.

On April 3 of this year, Alyce Taylor Elementary School students, teachers, volunteers, and school administrators gathered to plant a garden that would not only teach children the benefits of healthy eating and where their food comes from, but also vital STEM lessons.

A collaborative effort between the elementary school, The Raley’s Companies, and the Captain Planet Foundation, the Project Learning Garden at Alyce Taylor Elementary in Spanish Springs is one of three educational gardens the team helped establish at schools this year in Nevada and California.

For a decade, The Raley’s Companies have offered the Extra Credit grants program to K-12 schools to further the grocery retailer’s mission, as stated on its website, to “promote nutrition education, teach food literacy, address food insecurity, and encourage physical activity.”

Staff members at the Captain Planet Foundation, a nonprofit that works to empower youths to become good stewards of the planet, are adept at creating outdoor learning spaces across the United States. The group spearheaded the planting of Project Learning Gardens at nearly 750 schools domestically, in Canada, and in the UK.

After a discerning application process, Taylor Elementary and Mt. Rose Elementary School in Reno were awarded the Extra Credit grants in 2025 that the CPF helped implement.

Taylor Elementary’s garden — comprised of five raised beds planted with an array of seeds and starts — was used as a showpiece at the April event, hoping to build awareness around the program. A mobile cooking cart also was provided to the school so students could taste what they grew and harvested.

Getting the Grant
A school’s ability and willingness to nurture the garden and keep it as an ongoing asset for years to come was part of the grant-awarding process, explains Marty Ordman, business development director for the Captain Planet Foundation. In Taylor Elementary’s case, its existing garden had fallen into disrepair.

Once awarded the grant, the CPF team ensures the school has all of the tools and resources needed to replenish the existing garden, and that there are enough volunteers available for caretaking shifts. It also provides resources to help students plant and maintain thriving gardens, plus a curriculum for educators that incorporates STEM learning techniques into these botanical endeavors, including the science of how plants grow, pollination, how insects interact with plants, and how soils affect growth. Geography lessons teach where and why foods grow, and mathematics come into play when using fractions and geometry to divide up the garden.

“How can we as a grocery chain use our passion around healthy eating to expose our youths?” asks Chelsea Carbahal, vice president of community impact and public affairs for The Raley’s Companies. “So that’s either food system education, it might be food access … making sure our after-school [program participants] have access to healthy snacks and they’re not just giving our kids cookies.”

Benefits to students working in the Project Learning Garden are far reaching.

“For schools that embrace it, we’ve found they’re getting kids out of the classroom, they’re burning off some energy being outside,” Ordman says. “They’re able to use some things that are hard to grasp in the classroom but then outside doing it in real-life situations.”

Carbahal says that students were eager to participate on the day of planting, discussing what they wanted to grow and excitedly pondering the produce possibilities to come.

Another Extra Credit grants cycle for Project Learning Gardens will be available this fall. For details, visit Raleys.com/giving/extra-credit-grants.