-: I'm Adam Long and I'm the education manager
at Garden for the Environment.
A small non-profit in San Francisco
and I also work as an actor on the side.
So we're a non-profit in San Francisco
that has a small garden in the Inner Sunset neighborhood.
It's been around for 28 years.
We were founded to raise awareness
about drought tolerant plants
and growing a beautiful garden
that doesn't use a lot of water.
Doesn't use toxic chemicals
that can get into these water system
and we've since expanded and have veggie beds,
a greenhouse, toolshed, beehives, composting system.
We host about 35 field trips a year
from local school groups.
Have adult workshops on Saturday mornings
and a bunch of other opportunities to volunteer
and learn about gardening.
So I'm in the garden with my hands in the dirt,
I'm leading field trips with kids.
I do more coordination of the workshop program,
I don't teach workshops so much myself
but coordinate our teachers who come in
and are experts in particular topics.
I do social media, I work with our fiscal sponsor
to make sure everything is running smoothly.
A little bit in the way of fundraising
and reporting to our funders.
Giving people tours.
Planning our schedule, everything.
So, yeah, for our school field trips
we have a program with the Public Utilities Commission.
They do the water and sewer for the city of San Francisco
and they have given us funding
to bring in 32 field trips per year
free of charge to the schools.
So they come in at about 10 a.m.,
we introduce our staff, kind of talk with them
about what the garden is all about,
water conservation and sustainable gardening.
Take them on a tour, they see the whole garden end to end,
get to stop at all the different major points.
Quick snack break
and then we do hands on activities with them.
So the kids are actually like working with the compost
or planting plants or pruning shrubs,
or pulling weeds, spreading mulch,
doing any kind of little task we have in the garden.
We have a big picnic lunch together,
kind of wrap up and reflect,
see what they thought, what they learned
and that's it.
Sort of a three hour experience.