Summer Camps
Week 1, June 1-5
Pollinators & Movement
This week we will observe insects at work in the garden, watching how pollinators move, land, and travel between plants. Children will learn how pollination works, why it’s essential to ecosystems and food systems, and what happens when pollinators are missing.
Art projects will invite kids to use their own movement alongside a range of materials to explore motion, color and repetition, like the pollinators!
Garden activities will invite kids to observe and document pollinators, build simple supports like water stations and bee homes, work with seeds and native plants, and explore ways they can help pollinators in everyday spaces.
Week 2, June 8-12
Soil & Texture
This week kids will explore soil as a living part of the garden through hands-on observation and sensory exploration. They’ll dig, sift, and compare soil from different areas, noticing texture, moisture, and signs of life.
These discoveries will inspire art projects focused on texture, where children will experiment with natural and mixed materials to create layered, tactile surfaces.
Along the way, kids will build an understanding of how soil supports plants and insects, what makes soil healthy, and how care and time shape the ground beneath our feet.
Week 3, June 15-19
Weeds & Repetition
Kids will learn about common weeds they see every day, taking a closer look at how and where they grow and discovering their benefits and uses in the garden.
Through hands-on observation, they’ll notice patterns in leaf shape, growth habits, and spreading behavior.
In the studio, children will explore these ideas through printmaking and repeated mark-making, creating artwork that focuses on pattern and negative space inspired by the way weeds grow, spread, and persist in often overlooked spaces.
Week 4, June 22-26
Adaptation & Sculpture
Kids will explore how plants and animals adapt to their environments through hands-on sculptural building. They’ll study natural shelters and structures—such as nests, burrows, shells, and plant forms—and use those ideas to guide their own sculptures.
Working with found materials, children will experiment with stacking, balancing, shaping, and enclosing space to create forms that offer protection and stability.
Through making and revising, they’ll develop an understanding of how form helps living things survive in different environments.
Week 5, July 6-10
Water in the Garden & Color
Kids will observe how moisture moves through the garden by noticing rain, watering, and how plants and soil respond. These observations will carry into the studio, where children will experiment with creating pigments from plants and natural materials.
Through dyeing, pigment-making, and watercolor exploration, they’ll watch how liquid spreads, carries, and transforms materials while building an understanding of how consistent watering supports plant growth.
Week 6, July 13-17
Herbs & Sensory Art
Kids will explore herbs through their senses by harvesting, preparing, and working with them in simple, hands-on ways.
These experiences will extend into the studio, where children will create sensory-based artwork inspired by the textures, scents, and shapes of herbs.
Along the way, kids will explore practical ways herbs are used in gardens and everyday life, including companion planting, natural insect deterrents, and basic care in the field.
Week 7, July 20-24
Ecosystems & Fiber Arts
Kids will explore how ecosystems are made up of many connected parts through a collaborative art project, alongside focused work in fiber-based art such as weaving, cordage-making, and paper-making.
As they make, they’ll explore ideas of balance, rhythm, and connection, noticing how individual parts come together to create strength and stability—both in their artwork and in the life of the garden.
Week 8, July 27-31
Seeds & Pattern
Kids will create process-based, temporary artwork outdoors while investigating seeds and plant life cycles.
Through hands-on activities like seed saving, examining seed pods, and observing how seeds are arranged and dispersed, children will look for patterns such as spirals, repetition, and symmetry in nature.
These observations will guide their artwork, as they explore how plants grow, spread, and form patterns over time, and how change and impermanence are part of natural systems.