Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School in Berkeley, California, is home to the Edible Schoolyard, a gardening and cooking program created by chef Alice Waters in 1995. In the one-acre organic garden and kitchen, inner city kids plant, tend, harvest, and cook—all the while becoming aware of their food and stewardship of the land.

School days: As part of their curriculum, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders alternate between working in the garden and kitchen so they experience the food cycle from seed to plate.

What’s growing: In the garden, kids witness the natural world’s wonders. They push wheelbarrows full of compost across the grounds. They weed rows of carrots. They cut, wash, and bundle chard. They gobble raspberries right off the bush.

What’s cooking: “I want children to know cooking is easy and rewarding, a pleasurable part of everyday life that brings them closer to people they care about,” says Esther Cook, Edible Schoolyard’s chef and kitchen teacher.

Student journal: Charlotte, a middle school ­student, writes: “In the last ten weeks, I’ve learned how the garden works. Now I wonder about everything: where it lives and why it’s here. I feel proud every time we cook a dish or plant a tree.”

Sourcebook: For Edible Schoolyard recipes or ideas for starting a school garden, visit EdibleSchoolyard.org.