25 Oct Powell Gardens Receives $5,000 Grant from Sherman Family Foundation
Powell Gardens was recently awarded a $5,000 grant from Sherman Family Foundation to support its Plants Matter! Youth education program.
During this pilot year, students will benefit from three sessions that Powell Gardens staff will teach onsite and in their classroom with up to eight hours of teaching through hands-on lessons and complementary pre- and post-visit resources. The first of these sessions occurred in fall 2019 and the remaining two sessions are scheduled for spring 2020. To minimize the financial burden on the school district, the Plants Matter! program covers the costs of busing students to the Gardens for onsite sessions.
The Plants Matter! program pilot aims to deeply immerse students in the outdoors through multiple garden visits and an in-class session. Curriculum will emphasize topics such as the cycle of matter, plant ecosystems, energy loss via decomposition, energy needs for plant growth, and the environmental conditions needed by several species of Missouri plants to survive and thrive in our region. Low-income students are less likely to have access to out-of-school programs like Plants Matter! which increases the importance of this program to the target population’s education. Effective science instruction is crucial to students both for the present and the future. An academic foundation in science allows students to not only better understand the world around them, but to also be better prepared for high-demand, well-paying careers in the science and technology fields.
Powell Gardens is a Kansas City treasure with 970 acres of natural beauty less than an hour from downtown. In 1948, George E. Powell, Sr., a prominent Kansas City businessman and future owner of Yellow Transit Freight Lines (now YRC Worldwide), acquired a tract of land that was once a working dairy farm. Mr. Powell donated the 640-acre farm to the Kansas City Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America in 1969 and the land was used as a regional camp for over a decade. In 1984, the Powell Family Foundation began developing a horticultural and natural resource facility called Powell Center in partnership with the University of Missouri’s School of Agriculture. An environmental planning and design firm recognized that the site was ideal for development as a botanical garden. In 1988, official ties with the University of Missouri ended and Powell Gardens Inc., a not-for-profit organization, was established.