By Stephanie Vaccaro, Staff Writer
”Riverside parents have been marveling for years over our first-graders who deadhead roses, ask for broccoli and eat fresh-picked lemon sorrel like goats,” said Beth Behrend, co-chair and general organizer of the first ever Healthy Children, Healthy Planet event scheduled for this Saturday.
The event, which will take place at Riverside Elementary School, will have everything from soil composition experts with microscopes to tea tastings and soccer clinics, and with bluegrass music, said Ms. Behrend.
As part of a garden-based, PTO-sponsored residency program, all Riverside students learn in the school gardens with Dorothy Mullen on a regular basis, said Ms. Behrend. The children plant the garden, tend and harvest it and eat real food, all the while learning math, science, language arts and community service. Some children study the role of herbs in colonial history, others learn about the butterfly lifecycle, while others design and tend gardens dedicated to the Crisis Ministry food pantry.
”Several of us on the PTO’s garden committee wanted to find a way to share this magic — and the incredible resource of our organic gardens — with the wider Princeton community and beyond,” said Ms. Behrend. “We also wanted to have fun with our families and build community, while raising funds for garden upkeep and related educational programs. As a result, Healthy Children, Healthy Planet 2011 was born.”
”Dorothy Mullen, our resident school gardener, works magic with our kids in Riverside’s ‘outdoor classrooms’ for a few short hours each week,” said Ms. Behrend.
On Saturday, Ms. Mullen will give tours and demonstrate home gardening skills and some of the lessons they do with the children in the garden. “I will give a workshop about the motivation for school gardening, and it relates mostly to the epidemic to obesity and diabetes,” said Ms. Mullen.
Ms. Mullen hopes participants take away a sense of the value of gardening in terms of children’s health — and everyone’s health — as well as the demystification of gardening.
”Really, the whole thing in general for me is about helping children find vegetables delicious,” said Ms. Mullen.
The event is being sponsored by the Princeton School Garden Cooperative, the Suppers Program, Sustainable Princeton, Riverside Neighborhood Association and the Princeton Public Library.
Healthy Children, Healthy Planet will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and is open to the public. All proceeds will benefit the Riverside School garden programs.

