Fertile Minds: Children Belong in the Garden with Lara Litchfield-Kimber

Gardens are incredible learning landscapes—especially for children. Gardening encourages the development of critical early learning skills in young children. For older students, gardens provide dynamic learning environments in which to explore math, science, history, and culture. This presentation invites you to reimagine traditional gardens as powerful living classrooms.

Bio: Lara Litchfield-Kimber earned her BA from Amherst College and her MS from Cornell University. Formally trained in the agricultural sciences as a plant pathologist, Lara left research and teaching to become an entrepreneur, starting Fertile Minds, Inc., an informal science education group in Ithaca, NY, that developed children’s gardens to teach math and science. She joined the science center field in 2004 at Ithaca’s Sciencenter and later served as the executive director of the Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum in Poughkeepsie, NY, for nine years before coming to the Upper Valley in January 2022 to assume the role of executive director of the Montshire Museum of Science.