Teacher's Garden Program Now Feeds 750 Schools in South Africa

Bharathi Tugh saw a problem most teachers would have walked past: her special needs students in Chatsworth, KwaZulu-Natal, had no real curriculum, and the community around them had lost connection to the land after forced relocations.

She started small in 1995, building a garden the size of a door at West Park School. Her students with cerebral palsy learned to fill soil bags with one hand, watching vegetables grow from their own work.

Tugh designed lessons around how her students actually learned: touch, smell, taste, and time spent outside. A child who struggled in traditional classrooms could master composting, planting, and harvesting. Former students went on to work as groundsmen and grow their own food, skills that changed their economic futures.

Her curriculum became so effective that parts of it were adopted into South Africa's national agricultural studies framework. She won the National Teacher Award, but recognition wasn't why she kept going.

After 32 years in the classroom, Tugh realized she was "impacting one little school" when thousands needed help. In 2015, she joined Food & Trees for Africa full time to scale EduPlant, the school gardening program she'd participated in since that first door garden.

The Ripple Effect

Today, EduPlant operates in 250 schools directly, with a mentorship model that extends its reach to approximately 750 schools across all nine provinces. Teachers earn professional development credits for attending workshops, making gardening part of the curriculum instead of extra work piled onto already overwhelmed educators.

The program teaches permaculture, environmental ethics, and systems thinking alongside practical food growing. In a country where food costs keep rising and schools lack resources, students learn to produce nutrition and build food security networks in their communities.

Robyn Hills, who oversees programs at Food & Trees for Africa, says what sets EduPlant apart is that it actually reduces teacher workload instead of adding to it. The workshops run for six school terms, with one school sharing knowledge with the next in clusters.

Funded through partnerships including Tiger Brands, the program has become southern Africa's largest school food gardening initiative. What Tugh started with special needs students and a door-sized plot has grown into a national movement proving that a patch of soil really can change the trajectory of a child's life.