Meet our Team

Working with students in the garden is about slowing down, smelling the roses, listening to the robins flying throughout the fruit trees and picking berries. It is also about teaching students valuable skills and life-long lessons that they will carry with them their whole life. Being able to be that mentor that indulges their creative questioning and acknowledging the importance of patience, sharing, kindness, and uplifting their confidence in themselves has been my role at Lower Columbia School Gardens. I had never really experienced true magic until my life crossed paths with LCSG.

Hello, I joined the LCSG team in Spring 2023. And I love working with children of all ages. I grew up in Chicago and passed my teenage years in the Tri-Cities and worked for many years in agriculture. I'm from an immigrant family and I speak Spanish. Espero verlos en uno de los jardines!!

I started full-time at LCSG in August 2015, after one term as an AmeriCorps member. I coordinate gardens at Carrolls, Coweeman and Rose Valley, and support many others. I'm wild about kindness, truth, kitties (my kitty in particular), my partner Daniel, being a good listener, and living in a way that leaves the world better than I found it. My job is a combination of many things I love—working with (and learning from) young people who bring their excitement, curiosity, wisdom and realness to the gardens; working with plants, seeds and soil; working with adults who are also kind and respectful to, and patient with young people; and spending a lot of time outside. I am really grateful this organization exists in our community and feel pretty lucky to be part of it.

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Hi, I'm Hannah! I'm relatively new to the PNW and excited to be here. My background is primarily in environmental education, program coordination, and vegetable farming. Constantly unlearning and relearning, I strive to live life around the idea of treating others how they want to be treated. My vision with school gardens is to not only learn together with students on growing and appreciating food, but also provide space for social-emotional engagement and promoting a more equitable food system for the next generation. Hablo español (practicando) y ¡espero verte en el jardín!

The way that a garden teaches our hearts to be more open to loving each other and the world around us is so special. Working with kids and watching them discover things like the magic of eating plants they grew or the joy of gently petting a bumblebee is truly a dream. Together we learn that we must all be cultivators of the earth and that everything depends on each other—from the soil, to every living creature, to what we consume as humans. One of my favorite parts of School Gardens is showing students that no matter what they are going through in life they can always find support, acceptance, and purpose in the garden from all of our kindhearted staff and volunteers. Kids deserve the very best we can give, and I intend to give them a lot.

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I spend a lot of time these days steering the ship, so I’m always grateful when I get to use my construction background to design and build structures in gardens, and I LOVE to involve students in that process. To see the confidence and self-esteem kids get when adults entrust them to use real tools to do real work—it's transformative. And the same is true when kids get to grow and cook their own food. I am not enthused about the rate at which we humans are covering our beautiful world with concrete, plastic, and chemicals; this work equips young people with the tools and passion needed to move us in healthier directions. To unwind, I like to prune fruit trees, ride my bike in the forest, bake bread, and hang out with family and friends at Roland Wines.