School garden projects are neither simple nor easy endeavors.  Before the multitude of benefits from a school garden can be realized for participating teachers, parents and children, there is a great deal of physical and intellectual work to be done.  On a physical level there are a number of tasks that must be performed: planting space prepared, seeds sown, plants watered and tended to, area weeded and so on.  On an intellectual and organizational level there should be, among other things, communication, collaboration, and participation among project coordinators.  It is true that a garden project has the potential to transform a child’s education.  But a garden (like educating a child) demands hard work and commitment from everyone involved.  Research is beginning to show what many have intuitively known for years: gardens have an enormous capacity to both teach and heal.  Perhaps never before have school gardens been as popular as they are today.  But despite the broad support of individuals from the community grass-roots to the highest levels of the California Department of Education, school gardens are struggling to find a permanent place in the lexicon of contemporary education and on the grounds of California’s public schools.  The thesis attempts to understand this contradiction through a study of the development of two school garden projects in Yolo County, California.  The ethnography will illustrate the micro level complexities and challenges involved in developing a school garden and how these findings inform a macro level, institutional analysis of community development and public education in the State of California.