School Gardens: A Budget-Friendly Strategy to Reconnect Kids with Nature

A child born in 2020 will experience seven times more extreme climate events than a child born in 1960. To prepare the citizens of tomorrow, a study released on December 11 by WWF France and Eval-Lab suggests that one of the most effective and least expensive methods is education about living organisms, conducted outdoors and in contact with nature.

The research assessed the impacts of the WWF’s Gardening School program, which provides activity sheets and seeds to teachers and supports them in using a teaching garden. It reveals that these activities significantly enhance children’s connection to nature, their ecological sensitivity, and their environmentally-friendly behaviors, which will be crucial in the coming decades.

The study was conducted across 89 elementary schools in France, randomly divided between those implementing the program (45) and control schools (44). It followed 184 teachers and over 3,500 students for a year to measure their connection to nature, ecological sensitivity, environmental practices, well-being, and school climate. In France, outdoor classes are becoming more common.

«The garden provides a direct experience with nature… This awareness, experienced firsthand, has a much more lasting impact than a simple theoretical lesson. The habits learned in the garden—saving water, sorting waste, respecting biodiversity—become reflexes that go beyond the school environment and embed into daily life», the study explains.

The cost of the program is minimal: 42 euros per class for the year, which is about 1.4 euros per student in a class of 30, for four mailings of activities and seeds. These activities include experiments on germination, understanding soil composition, and learning about the life cycle of fruits and vegetables. If a school lacks a garden or cultivable land, setting one up costs on average 4,000 euros, or less than 30 euros per student in a school of 150 students.

Thanks to the program’s activities, the time teachers dedicate to environmental education related to the school garden increases by 50%, the study states. The effects are particularly pronounced among students in priority education networks, among girls, and among students initially least connected to living organisms.

For the WWF, this confirms that a light tool can produce real effects, provided that teachers are supported: according to the study, 90% of them wish to receive advice and help to be able to use the school garden effectively with their students.

«The garden is an educational tool that helps develop children’s environmental sensitivity, says Marjolaine Girard, head of Nature and Environmental Education at WWF France. Teachers use it as part of the planned curriculum. They teach math, French, physical activity in the garden. It doesn’t require creating an extra slot in the schedule, they teach differently».

These results come as a bill aimed at recognizing outdoor education in contact with nature and reaffirming the role of ecological transition in schools was submitted to the National Assembly in June 2025. The bill is not based on the WWF study, but on two parliamentary reports on education and ecological transition.

The proposed legislation seeks to enshrine regular access to outdoor activities and contact with nature in the Education Code, as well as the transmission of issues related to ecological transition and biodiversity preservation.

«Unlike many European countries (United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland), France is significantly behind in integrating contact with nature into its children’s education», the proposal states. Today’s children spend three times less time playing outside than their own parents did.

On the ground, teachers widely echo the findings of the study—even those who have never participated in the Gardening School program. Manon, a school teacher in Paris for eight years, gardened with her first-grade students for three years—without being part of the Gardening School program. She confirms the immediate effect of regular contact with soil.

«They still do writing production, they still discuss the reproduction of living beings, plants… They learn exactly the same things as in the classroom, except that they connect it to real-life experiences: everything makes much more sense to them», she says. «I only saw benefits, in the teacher-student relationship, but also among them, she adds, because they cooperate much more to achieve something together.»

However, these benefits quickly encounter real-world challenges. In Manon’s school, the gardening boxes were accessible during recess. As a result, plants were picked or pulled out as soon as they sprouted, making it nearly impossible to maintain the plantings over time.

In densely urban areas, additional constraints arise, such as soil pollution in Paris which prohibits growing plants intended for consumption. These material obstacles are compounded by a persistent cultural resistance: for many parents, a child not sitting at a table is not learning, further undermining the legitimacy of outdoor teaching.

Even when the teacher attempted to hold classes outdoors in a nearby park, administrative realities caught up with her: «In the Buttes-Chaumont park during winter, they told me: “lawn at rest”. We had to stay on a stabilized area with three other classes. It made no sense.»

These experiences precisely illustrate what the WWF-Eval-Lab study shows: outdoor school can become a powerful learning tool, but it remains fragile and underutilized when it relies exclusively on individual initiative. Without support, training, or institutional recognition, use remains uneven—and often precarious.

For WWF, the stakes extend far beyond the school context: it is about equipping children to face an ecologically changing world.

Marjolaine Girard emphasizes that today’s children are growing up in an era of «environmental amnesia»: «They have no idea what nature looked like before recent degradation. Hence the urgency of reconnecting them with the living world so that they want to protect it.» And she insists: «What the study shows is that the investments are not colossal compared to the benefits obtained.»