The School Gardeners’ Southwest Desert Almanac is a collaborative agenda to develop an ecoregion model for supporting and expanding garden-based science teaching (GBST). The project convened a 2.5 day conference in order to strengthen a network of practitioners and researchers who share a common interest in place-based learning, design-based research, and indigenous science (also called traditional ecological knowledge). Building from this common foundation, participants explored common opportunities and challenges in one US ecoregion--the southwest warm and cold deserts. During spring and summer 2020, conference participants and wide-ranging additional stakeholders contributed to the development of an almanac. It includes curated ecoregion GBST resources, ecoregion-specific GBST case studies,  GBST design conjecture, and GBST manuscripts. The almanac is an open educational resource accessible via the conference website (schoolgardenalmanac.org).

NSF Awards: 1908886

Presented in: 2020 (see original presentation & discussion)