Abstract

By their nature, gardens embody diversity. This article explores the cultural significance and value of school gardens for diverse communities in restoring and reclaiming their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and resilience through stories, myths, and practical examples. It highlights details for experiential dimensions of garden based learning education. Grounded in the research-based, seven-fold benefits of garden-based sustainability education, this article is the international collaborative effort of garden researcher-practitioners from indigenous, multicultural, urban, biocultural, and STEM perspectives from over a half dozen different diversity-intensive urban learning gardens in the Pacific Northwest. It also describes dynamic experiential teaching approaches for sharing stories and engaging with hands-on approaches to garden-based learning at multiple scales and modes. Vivacious, research-based garden learning from regional learning gardens activates urban learning gardens as sites of diversity-enhancing sustainability education, nurturing the resilience and collaborative creativity required for biocultural flourishing.