Dame Cheri Bloom
How doth your garden grow? Although not named Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, Dame Cheri Bloom would have many answers for the questions asked in this vintage English nursery rhyme. Gardening is her passion and vocation, a path she’s developed as an educator in various settings throughout her green-focused career. Her key mission: to construct gardens as a resource for building community, healing, and basic world knowledge for adults, families, and children. Her conviction: There’s nothing you can’t teach outdoors in a garden.
With a horticultural degree paired with a Master’s in Education from the University of Washington, Cheri created her own career direction. Her first position was on the East Coast where she worked with chronically mentally ill adults in a program established on 500 acres of privately donated farmland in New Jersey. Moving to the Seattle area, she joined the staff of a community psychiatric clinic, but the lure of green growing things grew ever stronger. She launched her own company, Samorina Greens, a business cultivating and selling salad greens to restaurants working with Transitional Resources. Her company grew and she was soon at a crossroads: buy a farm or change her career path. Aware of Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard program, her new pathway appeared and grew as quickly as a pea shoot in springtime.
After completing the Edible Schoolyard training course, Cheri initiated and launched a similar gardening program at Seattle’s Montlake Elementary School, successfully serving as manager and instructor for 17 years. Along with actual digging in the dirt and growing edible delights, the program expanded to produce teaching videos about sustainability and connections between food resources and community.
“Teaching children and their families about food and where it comes from was enlightening for everyone, plus the garden learning structure changed the way kids entered group experiences,” she says.
The Montlake program was also one of the first recipients of the Les Dames Seattle Chapter’s Green Tables grants, with the application initiated by a local parent. “It also introduced me to several remarkably supportive Les Dames members,” she notes. No surprise, she joined the LDES Green Tables committee when she became a Dame in 2018.
Building on her experiences at the Montlake Elementary program, Cheri is now participating in the University of Washington’s “Learning in Places” program evaluating garden education in Seattle schools and seeking ways to support family involvement. The program is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation and aims to encourage NextGen Science curriculum in Seattle schools.
“I’m excited about what can and will happen in garden education in schools,” she says. “In our COVID time, connections with nature are so important now, and I’m predicting gardens will see a renaissance in schools.” We agree. Thank you for all you do, Cheri!
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