school rooftop gardening?

We're in the very preliminary stages of planning a rooftop garden at West Suburban Montessori School in Oak Park. The school is not for profit and parent-run, and a lot of the parents I've spoken to about this seem excited about the idea. Knowing and appreciating the general expertise and food knowledge of many here - as well as the fact that so many posters live in Oak Park themselves - I figured it couldn't hurt to hit up the Forum for advice.

The general idea as we imagine it is to have the (pre-K) kids start the seeds inside in the winter, giving them an educational activity, then have the parents transfer the plants to the roof when the weather gets warm enough and take it from there. We'd like to start out small, then gradually expand the project as it, um, takes root. No one involved has any sort of experience doing this sort of thing, however, at least not at this scale. Has anyone out there done something this ambitious at their school? Does anyone have any words of wisdom, practical or otherwise? We were hoping to eventually hit up local (relevant) businesses for donated help in the garden's design and set-up. Does this seem likely? Does anyone know if there are any local (or national) programs that may offers grants or other resources to aspiring urban gardeners?

Thanks so much in advance for your help! We all have our fingers crossed that this might actually take off. I'm especially enthused by the response I've gotten from fellow parents who know virtually nothing about gardening but see this as an education experience themselves.

Vitesse, while our school doesn't have a rooftop garden, we did a PTA-driven landscape plan that included a vegetable garden. There is, in point of fact, quite a lot of money out there for farm-to-table and green initiatives for schools: we got one grant for a butterfly habitat, another for a rain garden, I believe our composter was some kind of in-kind grant. I think all of these were found with a quick google.

Interestingly, the Oak Park school district is partnered with a Farm-to-Table and Green initiative called Seven Generations Ahead. I wonder if they would partner with you as well.

Here's a list of other initiatives that might be a place to start looking. Here's another website on kids and gardening with a listing of funding sources.

Hope this helps...

I'm pretty sure the earthbox company has an initiative for schools, however if you're at a school you've probably got an unlimited supply of food grade 5 gal buckets you can use for SIPs.

The folks over at http://greenroofgrowers.blogspot.com/ have an awesome educational project going on how to build your own SIPs.

I was at the aldermans office the other day and I saw an initiative for schools and community gardens to get you free plants. -- Not sure if Oak Park has the same program.

My father was involved in safety inspections at schools being rennovated within the city of Chicago -- lots of roofs are not safe, not set up for any significant load.

Make sure it's safe before you put anything up there. Make sure there's nothing that's going to cause leaks.

I have a rooftop garden on my condo that I've built, using Earthboxes (I've posted pics on the Vegetable Growing thread). Earthbox does participate in a program that may be of interest: http://thegrowingconnection.org/ You might also want to try Earthbox directly. These things are perfect for rooftops. I would highly suggest that you get a structural engineer to take a look at your roof and give you the thumbs up before you start anything. The Earthboxes are about 80lbs totally full, so just do some quick math with how many boxes you'd like to try.

Like the other poster said, the green roof growers (a group I'm part of) have been gardening on our roofs for a few years with SIPs (sub-irrigated planters). If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

While it isn't specifically about rooftop gardening, the Chicago Botanic Garden has a pretty great program for starting a school garden. They've taken a lot of trouble to figure out solutions to a lot of the logistical problems that can crop up (no pun intended) with a school-affiliated garden (such as how to organize work sessions in the summer when school is out but garden tasks are plentiful, etc.).

You can find it on-line here at: http://www.chicagobotanic.org/schoolgarden/index.php.