A Pilot Study of a Youth Gardening Retrospective Survey Tool: Evaluating Outcomes of School-Based, Garden-Enhanced Nutrition Education Programs

Farm-to-school initiatives, including school gardens, are an increasingly popular strategy to increase student access to healthy produce and nutrition education opportunities. While studies show school garden programs and garden-enhanced nutrition education can positively impact student consumption of fruits and vegetables, there is a gap in evaluation tools that can be used by practitioners across varied school sites, grades, and communities, to assess outcomes of their garden programs. This effort piloted the Student Garden Retrospective Survey (SGR) for grades 4+ in four classrooms in two counties in California. The instrument included items to measure program exposure, garden skill experiences, changes in students’ behaviors, preferences, and attitudes, as well as their perceptions of the program. Student and teacher feedback on the evaluation tool was gathered to determine if students understood the questions being asked, were able to complete the survey, and whether the evaluation questions were pertinent to their school gardening experiences. The results demonstrate that the SGR is suitable for evaluating school garden and garden-enhanced nutrition education programming. In the future, the evaluation tool can be used by practitioners to iteratively improve garden-based education to enhance students’ nutrition and health outcomes.