Longue Vue is excited to announce a new partnership with Morris Jeff Community School beginning this fall. Thanks to a grant from Cox Communications, Longue Vue garden educators will lead monthly classes in gardening and the natural environment for all Morris Jeff eighth graders, leading to the creation of a raised garden maintained by students at the new Morris Jeff middle school campus in the Upper Ninth Ward.
The Cox grant covers the first two years of this innovative program, which combines academic enrichment with campus beautification and learning in nature. Program highlights will include practical skill-building in home gardening, tactile learning and connections to the school’s science curriculum, and take-home projects to be shared with family and community members. A culminating field trip will introduce students to the unique garden design and 20th-century house and collections of Longue Vue.
Longue Vue is a unique eight-acre estate in New Orleans, designed and developed during the 20th century as the family home of preeminent philanthropists and activists Edith and Edgar Stern. The gardens are the masterwork of pioneering female landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman, who also designed the home’s interiors. Today’s Longue Vue hosts visits, workshops, and special events. All Longue Vue programs are rooted in respect for nature and our regional environment, functional skills in the science and techniques of gardening, and explorations of how partnering with nature can help build sustainable habits and lifestyles.
Through the support of Cox Communications, this new Longue Vue Learners program at Morris Jeff will reach 90 students in the coming academic year through intensive education and engagement in nature.
