Salted Spade Garden Classes 2025
All classes will be held outdoors in the garden at 97 County Road 2150 North, Mahomet (this is our old location and not what currently shows as Salted Spade on Google Maps)
SPADE STUDIO (10:00-11:30am)
$10/child (for ages 6-10+)
Dates: June 12, July 17, August 7
Our garden is a classroom where we learn and grow together. During each spade studio session, we will read a book to inspire our youth gardeners, share a hands-on lesson focused on a garden topic, and create some garden artwork. Young gardeners will spend time in our garden, digging, planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting some vegetables to take home to share with their family.
I SPY SEEDS – JUNE 12
Let’s grab our magnifying glasses to inspect different kinds of seeds and learn what they need to germinate and grow. We will plant seeds in the garden as well as make our own pots to plant seedlings to grow at home. Colorful seeds will be used to create some beautiful seed art.
GREEN THUMBS – JULY 17
The garden is looking green! Let’s use our senses to explore the leaves of the herb and vegetable plants growing in the garden. We will walk through the photosynthesis process and the importance of chlorophyll so the plant can produce vegetables for us to eat. Our green thumbs will look for vegetables that are ready to harvest and pick some to take home. Chlorophyll and watercolors will help us create some veggie art.
PETAL PALS – AUGUST 7
The flower patch is in bloom, so bring a pal and join us to pick some pretty petals! We will study the different parts of a flower as we learn some floral arranging basics. Each gardener will arrange a bouquet and create some pretty petal art to take home.
GARDEN STORIES (10:00-10:45am)
Free (for ages 2-5 with an adult. Siblings welcome.)
Dates: June 19 and July 24
Come listen to a story under the shade trees by the garden. We will also incorporate some games and songs, use our senses in the garden, and make garden art to take home.
Meet Wendy! She lives at The Saltbox and leads our youth summer classes. Wendy has decades of experience in the garden from when she was a little girl helping grow vegetables on the farm to gardening for her own family and even helping Seth put together market baskets for the 4-H fair! Although no longer teaching in the classroom, Wendy is a teacher by trade and still uses this gift whenever the opportunity arises. With her creativity in the mix, learning is always fun!
Our garden is a place where we inhale the fresh beauty all around as we continually learn and grow. We carry out familiar routines and try new things too. In the garden we observe the tiniest of details as we partake in God’s grand design of food grown for human nourishment. It’s a special place to us, and we love to share this space with others who are either interested in just seeing how our vegetables are grown or getting in the dirt and taking in the joy of picking a fresh tomato off the vine.
We especially love to see kids exploring in the garden. Each summer our kids spend a lot of time working along side us or toddeling behind us, picking produce straight off the vine, and munching on it as we work. In these days of supermarket shopping, it can be easy to disconnect how food is grown- especially for kids who may be generations removed from a home garden- and we want as many kids as possible to have the opportunity to connect to the growing process.