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A legacy from New Orleans Charter was an elective class on gardening, created with a grant from the Fertel Foundation. Randy Fertel, of the educational foundation, connected Waters with the school and she offered to establish an Edible Schoolyard at Green.

Recasner turned down Fertel's idea at first. There were so many urgent needs. "I'd lost the entire school faculty, kids were scattered across the country, and I'd taken on the responsibility of getting the school open as fast as I could," Recasner said.

But he quickly changed his mind. "I realized it was just what we needed to do to restore kids' confidence in the soil and in the city. Also, I thought it'd be a great therapeutic tool" -- an island of calmness.

"I didn't want to have a building of social workers waiting to greet the kids," he said.

Waters' Chez Panisse Foundation is talking with the Monte del Sol charter school in Santa Fe, N.M., and with schools in Los Angeles and organizations in Greensboro, N.C., and Pittsburgh, said Marsha Guerrero, director of partnerships.

Gardening has taken root in 7-year-old Green student Alshawn Plain, whose grandmother Dianne Lewis said she and Alshawn have planted tomatoes in her back yard. He's also planted them at his own house nearby.

"When we go to the store, he wants to get seeds for the plants," she said.

Renada Jones, who attended Green in the mid-1990s but has lived in Houston since Hurricane Katrina, remembers it as a violent place. "Now it looks better," she said as she walked with 9-month-old son Dawayne Cook Jr. and 2-year-old daughter Trinity Cook. "It makes you want to put your children in here."

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