Katie's Krops today announced the addition of an outdoor classroom to their flagship garden, bringing hands-on educational programming to the Lowcountry in a safe and socially distant manner.
The new outdoor classroom and the Katie's Krops flagship garden are located on the campus of Crossroads Community Church in Summerville (505 Gahagan Road). It will open to the public on March 22nd, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and story time with Katie's Krops Founder, Katie Stagliano.
“This has been a longtime dream to be able to further empower children by teaching the fundamentals of gardening, sharing how to cook with the harvest, using the garden as inspiration for art classes, learning about the environment,” Stagliano said. “With my college degree completed, I am thrilled to be returning to Katie's Krops full-time and expand our offerings.”
This is a new venture for Katie's Krops, whose mission is to empower youth to start and maintain vegetable gardens of all sizes and donate the harvest to help feed people in need, as well as to assist and inspire others to do the same. Classes will include science, art, and crafts, cooking, story time in the garden, yoga, gardening basics, to name a few. In addition to classes, the classroom will allow for field trips to the garden.
Lisa Turocy, Katie's Krops Master Gardener, is excited about the outdoor classroom and beginning to teach educational programming.
“Being outside is always such a wonderful experience, and when you add the component of an outdoor classroom, I believe that the whole experience is enriched even further,” Lisa Turocy said. “The availability of such a valuable resource is very exciting for me, especially as a Master Gardener, for one of my personal goals is to continuously find ways of working with children in an educational environment.”
A class schedule will be on the Katie's Krops will be available at the opening and will be on the nonprofit’s website, www.KatiesKrops.com. Pre-registration is required, and classes will be capped to ensure social distancing. The majority of programs will be free of charge. Katie's Krop is actively seeking a sponsor for the classroom to expand offerings and keep programs free of charge for all families.
