Quality of implementation played a role in the effectiveness of a school garden program

Huys, N. ., Cardon, G. ., De Craemer, M. ., Hermans, N. ., Renard, S. ., Roesbeke, M. ., … Deforche, B. . (2019). Effect and process evaluation of a real-world school garden program on vegetable consumption and its determinants in primary schoolchildren. PLoS One, 14. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/%2010.1371/journal.pone.0214320

“Taste Garden” is a nine-week school garden program designed to improve students' vegetable consumption. The program -- developed and implemented by a local organization in Flanders, Belgium -- provides experiential gardening experiences for primary school children and classroom curricular materials for the teachers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect and process of the program. To the researchers' knowledge, “this is the first study to integrate quality of implementation in the effect evaluation of a school garden project.”

Students from nine schools participated in the study. Students from five schools served as intervention groups; students from four schools as control groups. Students in the intervention groups (N=149) assisted in sowing, caring for, and harvesting vegetables. Students in the control groups (N=201) were not involved in a school gardening program. All of the students (intervention and control) completed questionnaires before the implementation of the gardening program and again nine weeks later. This questionnaire was designed to evaluate the effect of the program in relation to students' vegetable consumption. Items on the questionnaire related to how often the children usually eat vegetables, how many vegetables they usually eat per day, and how often they usually eat soup. After the nine-week period, children and teachers at the intervention schools completed a questionnaire designed to evaluate the process used in implementing the program. The children's process evaluation questionnaire focused on how much they appreciated or liked the “Taste Garden” project and their experience working with the garden planters. Six teachers completed the process evaluation questionnaire which focused on implementation quality.

Children's responses indicated that, for the most part, they enjoyed working in the school garden. Only ten children reported not liking it. Most of the children also liked the lessons; 19 did not. Most of the children indicated that they would like to work more in the school garden; 17 indicated they wanted to work less or never wanted to work in the school garden again. Teachers' responses indicated that, on average, they implemented less than half of the lessons in the educational guide. Lack of time, difficulty integrating the material in their normal lessons, and other implementation issues prevented most of the teachers from delivering the lessons as described in the guide.

Findings showed no positive effects on vegetable consumption. There were changes, however, in knowledge regarding recommendations for vegetable consumption. Knowledge in the intervention group increased, while knowledge in the control group decreased. No other significant intervention effects were found. When implementation quality was taken into account, however, small effects were found for awareness. Awareness decreased for intervention students where implementation was deemed to be of low quality and increased for intervention students where implementation was deemed to be of high quality.  Quality of implementation, then, seemed to have played a role in the effectiveness of the “Taste Garden” intervention.

Research Partner

Research Category