Compost Connectors bring garden education to schools around metro Atlanta
The garden at Marietta Middle School now bursts with sage, lemon balm, peppers and other herbs, but the bright space in the building’s center was not always this way.
Its impressive growth is due in part to Compost Connectors, a partnership between Food Well Alliance and five metro Atlanta public school systems.
What began as a small pilot program in Marietta City Schools in 2021 has steadily grown, planting roots in 15 schools this school year across metro Atlanta to give K-12 students hands-on experience in reducing Georgia’s food waste. In just a few years, it has already diverted over 5 tons of food waste from their cafeterias to create school gardens.
Now, the program aims to expand after a $300,000 donation from the Atlanta Falcons Youth Fund, led by the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.
“Watching them come alive is very rewarding,” Michelle Gambon, compost educator at Marietta City Schools, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Dubbed the “Compost Queen,” Gambon is a big reason Compost Connectors has flourished — and not only in Marietta, but around the metro area. She has been educating students about composting for 16 years, first as a parent volunteer before directing her time to Marietta City Schools in 2019, two years before Compost Connectors began.
Under her guidance, students learn to navigate the ins and outs of running a composting operation. From collecting food scraps to monitoring temperatures, the students work together to learn the benefits of creating nutrient-rich, healthy soil.
“(Marietta City Schools) were one of our pilot schools largely because Michelle was here to act as an educator and liaison to the school,” said Chloe Weathington, urban agriculture project manager at Food Well Alliance. “It was a really good fit.”
The students Gambon is currently teaching have only been learning about composting for about a month, but they walk through the garden with confidence and can comfortably identify different plants.
According to Addelynn Covingtree, a seventh grader at Marietta Middle School, students are chosen to compost alongside Gambon through a garden test.
“The kids who show, like, they’re not afraid of dirt, (grime) or just helping out the garden, they will get a permission slip and their teachers will sign it,” Covingtree told the AJC. “Then after lunch, you go with Ms. Gambon, and we would go out to the garden.”
Yadajah Gresham, another seventh grader, says the program has helped her connect with classmates she might not have met during her normal class schedule.
“I just came here this year,” Gresham said. “It’s a good way to make friends.”
Gambon finds these moments between students rewarding, saying she enjoys “seeing a student change from who they might be in here, and come alive when they get outside in the garden.”
Deeply passionate about composting and gardening, the Compost Queen also finds joy in educating the next generation about something so vital.
“Take something that looked like waste, and then it becomes this viable product that they can use to grow something healthy,” Gambon explained.
The program has reached over 11,000 students across Georgia, helping curb food waste at a time when state landfills are nearing capacity. At Marietta Middle School, students are using what they’ve learned to reshape how they see the world around them.
“The garden gives us what we want and need, and we just don’t want to take more from it,” Covingtree said. “We take what we can get, and we can help it grow even more.”
