Press

Shakira Castronovo stood in a classroom at the Manhattan School for Children on West 93rd Street on a recent afternoon and hushed a squirming group of kindergartners perched around a blue carpet. “Where do you think I picked this?” she asked, pinching a leafy-looking thing between her index finger and thumb. “It was picked fresh just few minutes ago.”

When Celia Kaplinsky, a Brooklyn elementary school principal, visited a schoolyard garden project in Berkeley, Calif., a few years ago to see if it could work back home, something impressed her more than the lush rows of tomatoes and cucumbers.