School Garden Network
“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
— Margaret Mead
School Garden Network is living proof of this power. What started out as an informal gathering of garden educators in 2003 now reaches more than 50,000 students a year in more than 50 schools throughout Sonoma and Marin Counties. With a range of innovative programming, including edible schoolyard support, schoolyard habitat projects, and Summer Garden Camp (this year in collaboration with fellow Farm Trails member Solar Punk Farm), this Sebastopol-based nonprofit delivers on its mission to grow healthy students, families, schools, and communities through garden-based education. School Garden Network (SGN) is celebrating its 20th anniversary as a nonprofit this year, and to mark this milestone, we visited with Executive Director Sue Davis, as she and her team hosted their immensely popular spring Grow Kit distribution in April at Permaculture Skills Center (also a Farm Trails member) to learn more about Sue’s background, the founding of SGN, and its positive impacts on the next generation.
School Garden Network, P.O. Box 1367, Sebastopol, CA 95473 • schoolgardens.org
How did you get interested in farming?
Food has always been at the center of my life. My great-grandfather started a small produce market that grew over generations — my grandfather ran it, then my father. By the time my family sold the business when I was in high school, food wasn’t just something I ate; it was part of my identity. Growing up in a family business also meant that entrepreneurship never scared me. I always knew I wanted to build and lead something of my own.
When I moved to Sonoma County in 2004, those threads started coming together in a new way. I was pursuing a master’s degree in Leadership and Humanities, began studying nutrition education, volunteered on a farm in Occidental, and fell in love with the work of growing food. That experience led me to co-found the Bohemian Farmers Collective, where I spent more than a decade farming collaboratively — growing food and flowers for a CSA, farmers’ markets, and local restaurants, and eventually growing and selling locally adapted seeds. It was community-rooted work, and it taught me the rhythms of production farming, the discipline of managing accounts and client relationships, and the power of collective effort.
I first joined the School Garden Network board around 2007, drawn by a passion for improving school food and a desire to support the organization’s early work. After several years as a volunteer, I stepped away to focus on farming and raising a young family. A few years later I was convinced to rejoin the board — reluctantly, I’ll admit. Within a year, I stepped into the interim Executive Director role while the organization searched for new leadership. As it turned out, I wasn’t going anywhere. My background in food, farming, and community-based enterprise proved to be exactly the foundation SGN needed, and nearly nine years later I’m still at the helm. This year, we celebrate SGN’s 20th anniversary — and I’m grateful to be here for this important milestone.
What is the history of the School Garden Network?
School Garden Network began in 2003 as something simple: a monthly gathering of garden educators who needed each other.
At the time, there was no real network for garden coordinators in Sonoma County. Many felt isolated — doing meaningful but often invisible work, spread across schools with little connection to colleagues who understood the particular joys and challenges of teaching outside. So a small group of educators decided to change that. They began meeting monthly, rotating visits to each other’s garden sites, sharing ideas, troubleshooting problems, and slowly building something larger than any one school could create alone.
Those early roots ran deep. Several of the founding members had close ties to the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) and its Sowing Circle community, whose values around land, food, and education helped shape SGN. OAEC served as SGN’s fiscal sponsor in those formative years, providing the organizational support that allowed the network to grow. In 2006, School Garden Network became its own 501(c)(3) nonprofit — a reflection of how far that first informal gathering had come.
Today, SGN works with more than 150 schools across Sonoma and Marin Counties. What started as a handful of educators sharing seeds and solving problems together has grown into a regional network that supports teachers, sustains school garden programs, and ensures that more than 50,000 students have access to the kind of hands-on, nature-based learning that changes how they relate to food, the earth, and each other.
What do you do?
School Garden Network is dedicated to growing healthy students, families, schools, and communities through garden-based education. We work in collaboration with federal and state agencies and local organizations and businesses to facilitate and implement edible and native habitat gardens at schools, lead school garden programming, and provide teacher trainings and ongoing resources for educators. We strive to serve as a network for local community resilience, providing over 50,000 students in Sonoma and Marin Counties with access to immersive garden spaces on their campuses. These gardens break down barriers to fresh food access and inspire healthy food habits, enhance habitat for wildlife, teach ecological literacy and stewardship, and provide a space for students to feel a sense of empowerment, connection, and joy.
What do you find most rewarding about your work?
I’m a problem solver at heart. What energizes me most is facing a challenge and focusing on the solution rather than getting stuck in the problem. And with small nonprofits, there are always problems to solve.
Our Grow Kit program represents everything I love about this work. It was born out of a real problem — a broken supply chain that was leaving schools with root-bound, unhealthy plant donations that did more harm than good. So we reimagined the whole system, shifting from surplus donations to direct partnerships with local farmers who grow high-quality, seasonally appropriate plants specifically for school gardens. What started in 2021 with 20 schools and 2 farmers has grown into 150 Grow Kits per year, more than 20,000 plants in the ground, and 15,000 students annually across Sonoma County and into the broader North Bay. The program now weaves together 6+ local farms, compost from Sonoma County’s Zero Waste program, products from Harmony Farm Supply, wine barrels from Hobo Wine Company, and community distribution hubs into something that is genuinely greater than the sum of its parts. That’s the kind of work that lights me up — dynamic, collaborative, rooted in solutions, and ultimately in service of kids getting their hands in the soil.
What do you value about being a member of Farm Trails?
As a Farm Trail member, I value the values of Farm Trails as an organization and I genuinely admire the people leading and running the organization. I value how hard the Farm Trails staff and community work to pull off the Gravenstein Apple Fair, which is one of those rare community events that feels truly rooted in place — a celebration of the farmers, food producers, and agricultural traditions that make Sonoma County extraordinary.
What are your hopes for the future of SGN and/or Sonoma County ag?
My deepest hope is that agriculture remains a living, vital pillar of this community — not just as an industry, but as a shared value. I want to see that protected and passed forward, and I want everyone to have real access to fresh, chemical-free food.
For School Garden Network, I see enormous possibilities ahead. We are the only organization of our kind in the North San Francisco Bay Area — no other county in this region has a School Garden Network. My hope is that SGN grows to serve the entire region, and that every school that wants a school garden program, can have one that is well managed, integrated as an extension of the indoor classroom, and can serve all students and subjects.
I also want to build an organization that is sound and just. That means securing stable, long-term funding, so we’re not making decisions about students’ programs based on the uncertainty of the next grant cycle. It means growing our capacity to serve more schools, more deeply. And it means building an organization where our staff — the people who show up every day to do this work — are supported with full-time positions, competitive salaries, and real benefits. You cannot build a movement on passion alone. When we invest in the people doing this work, we invest in the longevity of everything we’re trying to grow. The garden has always been a place of patience and possibility. That’s how I think about SGN’s future, too.
What advice would you give to someone starting out in your line of business?
My advice would be to invest in relationships before you need them. Be generous with your knowledge and your hard-won lessons — the more openly you share, the more trust you build, and trust is the foundation of everything.
Those partnerships will show up in more ways than you expect. The right collaborators become co-applicants on grants, implementation partners in the field, advisors who sharpen your thinking, and advocates who open doors you didn’t know existed. When your values are aligned, collaboration multiplies what’s possible — you’re no longer limited by your own organization’s capacity, but lifted by the collective.
We learned that firsthand. During the pandemic, when we faced some of the most precarious moments, it was our community partners — people who had walked alongside us for years — who carried us through. That experience confirmed what I now know to be true: collaboration isn’t just a strategy. It’s a survival skill.
Photos by Kelsey Joy Photography
