Beyond Buzzwords: Why Biodiversity is the Backbone of a Thriving School Garden

When you hear the word biodiversity, do your eyes glaze over just a little? It's understandable — the word gets tossed around so often in education, sustainability, and environmental circles that it starts to sound like background noise. But here’s the truth: when it comes to school gardens, biodiversity isn’t just a concept. It’s a practical, powerful, and incredibly underutilized tool.

As a gardening coach for teachers and a Permaculture designer, I’ve seen firsthand how integrating biodiversity into school gardens can completely transform the way students and teachers experience learning, nature, and food. In this blog post, we’ll dig deep (pun intended) into what biodiversity really means in a school garden setting, how it connects with Permaculture, and why it might be the most important principle you’ve never fully embraced.

What We Think Biodiversity Means — and What It Actually Is

In simple terms, biodiversity refers to the variety of life in a particular habitat. In a school garden, this includes not just the vegetables you plant but also the insects, birds, fungi, bacteria, herbs, flowers, ground covers, and even the weeds.

Unfortunately, many school gardens are built like mini versions of industrial farms: neat rows of the same plant repeated over and over. A tomato patch here, a bean patch there — it looks organized, but it’s not how nature works. And nature is the best teacher and partner you have in a garden.

Biodiversity isn’t about looking messy. It’s about building a community of plants and creatures that support each other — just like a good classroom.

Biodiversity and the Permaculture Lens

Permaculture is a design philosophy that mimics the resilience and harmony of natural ecosystems. It’s not just about gardening — it’s about designing human life in ways that regenerate rather than deplete.

When you apply Permaculture to school gardening, you step into a world where a tomato isn’t just a tomato. It’s part of a larger system that includes pollinators, pest predators, companion plants, and soil microbes — all working together to grow food with less work and fewer inputs.

Permaculture is rooted in 3 ethics (Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share) and 12 design principles. While all of them are important, four of these principles are especially relevant to creating biodiverse school gardens:

1. Observe and Interact

Before planting anything, take the time to observe your environment. What grows well already? Where do bees like to hang out? What parts of the yard get the most sun? When you pay attention to nature’s patterns, you can design your garden with it, not against it.

2. Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback

A monoculture patch that gets eaten by pests is nature giving you feedback. A garden full of ladybugs and buzzing pollinators? That’s also feedback. Adjust accordingly. This mindset is incredibly aligned with what we encourage students to do — reflect, learn, iterate.

3. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services

Nature has built-in systems for fertility, pest control, and pollination. You just have to invite them in. That means planting flowers for pollinators, letting some herbs go to seed, or keeping mulch on the soil to encourage microbial life.

4. Integrate Rather Than Segregate

In traditional gardening, we tend to segregate: all the tomatoes in one bed, all the lettuce in another. But nature prefers diversity. When you plant tomatoes with basil, marigolds, and beans, you create relationships between the plants that reduce pests, improve growth, and save you effort.

From Industrial Rows to Living Ecosystems

Let’s paint a picture. Imagine a school garden where each bed contains just one type of plant. It’s tidy. It’s easy to label. But it’s also vulnerable.

Take tomatoes, for example. A monoculture tomato patch is an open invitation to pests like aphids. Once they find it, they feast. And because there’s nothing else around to stop them, your only recourse is constant spraying, hosing, and manual intervention. Sound familiar?

Now picture this: a bed with tomatoes, basil, and marigolds. Basil enhances tomato flavor and growth. Marigolds deter pests and attract ladybugs. Ladybugs eat aphids — hundreds per day — and leave behind a pheromone that keeps aphids from returning. Suddenly, your garden is managing itself. And it’s beautiful to boot.

Why Kids Love Biodiverse Gardens (and Teachers Will Too)

Biodiverse gardens are:

• Lush and full of life: Think butterflies, bees, frogs, and lizards.

• Educational ecosystems: Every plant and creature has a role to play — and a lesson to teach.

• Low-maintenance: Nature does the work for you when you design smartly.

• Sensory-rich: Different colors, textures, scents, and sounds engage all kinds of learners.

And most importantly, they support the educational goals we already value: authentic learning, systems thinking, curiosity, collaboration, and stewardship.

How to Start Bringing Biodiversity Into Your School Garden

You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Start with small steps:

• Add companion plants to existing beds (like basil and marigold with tomatoes).

• Let some herbs flower to attract pollinators.

• Avoid pesticides that kill beneficial insects.

• Create microhabitats with logs, stones, and water dishes.

• Mix vegetables with flowers and herbs.

And if you’re worried about summer maintenance — you’re not alone. That’s why I created my class School Gardens with Almost No Summer Maintenance. You can find the link to it in the resources below.

Final Thoughts

Biodiversity in school gardens isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have. It makes your garden:

• Stronger

• Smarter

• More sustainable

• More student-friendly

Let’s teach the next generation to grow with nature, not against it. Let’s move beyond the buzzword — and into the garden.

Ready to dive deeper? 🎧 Listen to the full podcast episode
📘 Learn more about low-maintenance school gardens: School Gardens with Ease Free Guide

Let’s grow something great together. 🌿

— Leila Mireskandari
Founder, Kids Growing City
Host, School Gardens with Ease Podcast