We strive to provide quality resources for our community. Check out and share our free resources library! On this page you will find garden guides and manuals created for educators. You will also find a number of activities for gardeners of all ages. We have sorted our activities into age ranges, from early childhood to high schoolers. Many of these resources have been translated into Spanish.
Educator Resources & Guides
Cultivating Young Leaders
City Blossoms and the U.S. Botanic Garden have teamed up to bring you this free, downloadable workbook. This innovative resource, informed by our Youth Entrepreneurship Cooperative (YEC) program, is complete with templates and tools to support anyone interested in connecting high school youth with gardens and entrepreneurship skill-building.
What's the Right Garden Signage for You?
In order to make growing spaces more inviting, and to ensure that we can incorporate art and expression even in the off-seasons, we design durable and kid-friendly garden signage. Bringing art into community spaces through signage helps nurture a sense of joy and ease. This free pdf is designed to help you start creating your own unique garden signage.
School Garden Guide
Across the District, new school gardens are being established and existing school gardens are being enhanced to provide students with high-quality garden-based instruction. This guide was created in collaboration with the United States Botanic Garden and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. Together, we recognize the value of garden-based learning and the need for clear and accessible guidance to support school garden learning opportunities. We invite teachers, school administrators, community-based organization staff, community members, and parents to download this guide for free.
Greenhouse Manual
The U.S. Botanic Garden, National Center for Appropriate Technology, and City Blossoms have teamed up to develop this award winning, introductory manual for educators wanting to better use new or existing greenhouses for educational purposes. The manual clearly and concisely lays out a basic understanding of greenhouses, how to integrate them into lessons, and how to effectively use greenhouses in classroom curricula and out-of school activities. We are proud to announce that this manual has been awarded 2nd place in the American Alliance of Museums Education Category of their Publications Awards.
What's in our library?
Gardens are a great place to enjoy a book together. This free pdf is a compilation of City Blossoms’ favorite books for kids and their educators. This resource includes over 200 garden, nature, and food-themed books for children ages two through ten.
Recipe Cards/tarjetas de recetas
Looking for a sensible, quick and healthy meal? Here are three shareable and bilingual recipes from our cookbook. They’re kid-tested and kid-approved, but also great go-to meals for adults. We selected these because of their adaptability based on what you may have on hand: Kale & Chickpea Spread, Garden Ramen, Sweet Potato Hash.
What's In a Cooking Box?/
¿Qué hay en una caja de cocina?
This free, bilingual pdf outlines our favorite tools and pantry items to keep on hand for preparing garden fresh recipes. City Blossoms’ Cooking Boxes are designed to provide everything you’ll need to easily make a range of recipes with 15-25 kids in any classroom or garden.
What’s in a nature play box?/ ¿Qué hay en una caja de juegos de la naturaleza?
This free, bilingual pdf outlines everything you would find in a City Blossoms Nature Play Box. Many of these items can be collected for free, so this box is low cost and versatile. We’ve also included some of our favorite ideas for independent stations and activities to try either in the garden or any other green space. This resource can also be adapted into a backpack, for mobile use!
What’s the Right Raised Bed for You?
Our partners often decide to include raised beds in their garden designs, and we frequently get questions about how to build them. There are lots of ways to construct raised beds and a wide range of materials to choose from. In this pdf, we’ve highlighted different materials to consider using, along with the step-by-step process of how we construct raised beds.
What's The Best Garden for you?
City Blossoms has been co-designing and building kid and youth driven outdoor classrooms for over 10 years with students, parents, educators, and neighbors. This free pdf presents what types of questions you should ask yourself and your team when outlining a new garden project. This worksheet helps identify all of the tools you’ll need to make a truly sustainable space.
Early Childhood
Early Growers Mindfulness Series
Join Early Growers Fellow, Sae, for garden and nature-themed mindfulness practices and stretches that can be done at home. These videos are meant for all ages and do not require any additional equipment.
Click to learn more about our Early Growers program.
Garden Movement/Movimiento del Jardín
Looking for a joyful way to get little ones moving indoors? The garden songs section of our early childhood curriculum includes five bilingual and nature-based songs to help get you started. Complete with lyrics and simple choreography, the whole family will be dancing in no time!
Botanical Artists/Artistas Botánicos
Kids can channel their creative energy both inside or outdoors with nature drawings. If you don’t have access to a growing space or aren’t able to go outside, we suggest adapting this activity to your indoor environment.
Garden Mural/Mural del Jardín
In the classroom, we build murals using big pieces of butcher-paper, tempura paint, glue, and a lot of different textures. However, families don’t need access to those things to bring an indoor ecosystem to life.
Elementary & Middle School
Virtual Garden Field Trip Series
Join the City Blossoms team for this educational series! Each field trip is based off of our hands-on, nature-based curriculum. Join us for these short, virtual adventures at Marion St. Intergenerational. City Blossoms offers an assortment of affordable Field Trip experiences, which are designed to support learning standards, explore nature, and teach about food production.
Habitat Exploration/
Exploración del hábitat
We invite young learners to explore the habitats around them and think about all of the different living things they could support. This lesson will work well for younger kids, in addition to older learners looking to explore habitat's essential elements. Exploring these elements builds a foundation for more complex concepts, like ecosystems and food chains. Check out our Habitat Exploration: Virtual Garden Field Trip for an interactive lesson!
Garden SuperHeroes/
Supérheroes del jardín
This bilingual garden-based education workshop is a 5 part series appropriate for grades 3 and 4, and adaptable for other ages. Students will strengthen literacy skills and increase ecology knowledge by making comic books to illustrate the relationships between pests and beneficial insects in the garden. This resource includes additional insect and plant reference images and information for educators or families to work on this activity from home.
Super Plants/Súper Plantas
Through this bilingual activity, we invite kids to observe the many differences between plants in a diverse garden ecosystem. Before building your own super plant, check out our Garden Superheroes: Virtual Garden Field Trip for even more information and inspiration!
ecosystem Exploration/
Exploración Ecosistémico
We use the garden as a site for our investigations and discuss the way living things work together to transfer energy throughout the community. This activity is encourages kids to think about their own place in the garden ecosystem and food chain. Check out our Ecosystem Exploration: Virtual Garden Field Trip for an interactive lesson!
High School
Practicing Shinrin-Yoku or Forest Bathing
This mindfulness activity focuses on 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘳𝘪𝘯-𝘺𝘰𝘬𝘶, also known as 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. Unlike exercising outside or going for a walk to the store, this practice is about being in nature and utilizing your senses to connect with your outdoor environment. In this video, City Blossoms Fellow, Jahni, talks through the elements of shinrin-yoku. Similar to our other nature-based activities, we encourage you to be creative and think about the nature that exists nearby, whether it's in a park, backyard, stoop, or the sidewalks of your neighborhood.
Sustainable City Scavenger Hunt #1/
BúSQUEDA DE UNA CIUDAD sustentable #1
We wrote this bilingual lesson for teens in an urban setting, but if you do not have the ability to walk around your neighborhood safely, we encourage you to apply these ideas to an indoor scavenger hunt. Think about how your daily activities can have an impact on the world around you and most of all, be creative!
Sustainable City Scavenger Hunt #2/
BúSQUEDA DE UNA CIUDAD Sustentable #2
This bilingual lesson builds off of the Sustainable City Scavenger Hunt Part 1. This activity is designed for teens in an urban setting, but if you do not have the ability to walk around your neighborhood safely, we encourage you to apply these ideas to an indoor scavenger hunt. Think about how your daily activities can have an impact on the world around you and most of all, be creative!