Gardens

 

In 1999, Balboa Magnet converted a kindergarten playground into an 8,000 square foot garden. This beautiful space, filled with California Native plants and trees, was designed to be a teaching garden for Balboa’s students. Over the years, our scholars have enjoyed learning about California’s unique climate while planting native wildflower seeds, releasing butterflies and mason bees, reading books from our adjacent library and participating in special class outings in this wonderful space. Balboa’s garden is a Certified Wildlife Habitat and an active Monarch Waystation.

 

Balboa is also home to a productive vegetable garden where we grow a wide variety of organic vegetables, fruits, herbs and edible flowers each year. Weekly gardening sessions cover a wide variety of science-based lessons, following the University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources standards. Our vegetable garden has an ecosystem pond where students are able to observe the life cycles of mosquitofish and aquatic snails. Everything that is grown in the vegetable garden is planted and maintained by Balboa’s students under the supervision of a trained UC Master Gardener.