$1M in state budget makes Rialto school district healing garden possible
Aside from a few young trees and tons of dirt, there isn’t much at Buena Vista Drive and Alder Avenue in northern Rialto.
But from this weedy, vacant 2.6 acres, the Inland Empire’s first International Healing Garden will grow.
Thanks to $1 million in the 2021-22 state budget, the Rialto Unified School District will transform the blighted corner into an innovative outdoor educational environment unique to the area, utilizing plants from all over the world to support the social and emotional health of its students and the community as a whole.
“This will be a place where the community can come and relax and learn more about the environment, learn more about how to take care of the plants that give us energy,” school board member Edgar Montes said Thursday after breaking ground at the site. “We hope that from this project we
can spark a number of different interests. It’ll be available for field trips, it’ll be a place where some people who don’t have access to a garden, who don’t have access to
outdoor space, can go and relax and breathe some fresh air.
“Here, what we hope to give is that beautiful nature, that beautiful part of the Earth so people can come and learn more and be motivated to do more, not only at home, but in their community.”
Included in the design is a lake that will have a variety of plants to teach ecosystem balance.
There will be myriad handson activities for all ages, as well as garden and teaching areas, a 20-foot-tall flower sundial and shade canopies.
A large turf field, visitors center and eating areas also are planned.
Across the street from Kucera Middle School, the garden will be surrounded by a 6- or 8-foot wrought-iron fence for security.
Imagined three years ago as a space for district students with special needs, the idea evolved into what is planned now as an educational haven for everyone, Superintendent Cuauhtémoc Avila said Thursday.
District officials have demonstrated “that energy, that spirit of a kid” in creating such an innovative learning space, Avila said.
“We have a lot of great things happening on our campuses, inside the classroom,” Avila said, “but we also need to think outside the classroom.”
Assembly Majority Leader Eloise Gómez Reyes, D-San Bernardino, championed the project to state leaders this past budget cycle, securing the $1 million to bring the garden to fruition.
“We want students to learn all the basic things, of course,” Reyes said Thursday, “but when you’re talking about the arts, you’re talking about planting, when you’re talking about having these children plant the seed and nurture it and see it and enjoy it, it takes a lot of work.
“It is an excellent plan and the fact the Rialto school district has been able to put a garden in every elementary school, that’s a big deal because it isn’t something you see in other schools.
“I hope other districts will learn from that and take the lead.”