Woman in red shirt beside shaded gravel path
Greenspace volunteer Adeli D. spoke about caring for the Saltonstall and Lloyd community garden in New Haven, Connecticut, in a story from the New Haven Urban Resources Initiative. Photo by Rich Press.

This step can also be assigned as a take-home assignment.

Share that oral histories are a way to collect stories of the past. Some of the stories submitted to Community of Gardens were captured as oral histories.

An oral history is “a process of collecting, usually by means of a tape-recorded interview, recollections, accounts, and personal experience narratives of individuals for the purpose of expanding the historical record of a place, event, person, or cultural group.” (Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage)

This method can be a valuable tool for collecting stories of gardens that may no longer exist anymore and that have limited written and photographic documentation.

Ask students to identify a gardener to interview.

The gardener can be a family member, caregiver, neighbor, teacher, or other adult. They can also be a peer, with permission from the teacher and the gardener’s parents or guardians. If students have trouble identifying a gardener, contact local garden clubs and community gardens to see if any members would like to participate in an interview. Once your students have each selected a gardener to interview, have them schedule an appointment with the person to conduct the interview.

Students should do some background research, so they go into the interview feeling prepared. What can they find out about the period their interviewee grew up in? Did any major historical events take place? What was their neighborhood like ten or twenty or thirty years ago? If they emigrated from a different country, what can you learn about that country?

Dig Deeper: You may want your students to focus on a particular theme in their interviews and their interviewee choice. Here are some ideas:

  • Women
  • Immigration
  • Sustainability and environmental practices
  • Access to fresh food