Miti Kitchen Gardens
Growing food, nurturing communities.
A kitchen garden is one of the simplest ways to keep a child in school: it puts a reliable, nutritious meal on the table every day.
Many of the schools we work with have no reliable lunch provision for their learners — and hunger is one of the quiet reasons children stop attending. Miti Kitchen Gardens tackles this directly: we design and build regenerative food gardens — raised beds, keyhole gardens, vertical gardens, fruit orchards and woodlots — that supply a school’s feeding programme with fresh vegetables, legumes and fruit, using organic, low-input growing methods.
Every garden comes with training, not just infrastructure. Our five-day curriculum takes school garden teams and teachers through permaculture design, soil health, composting and biochar, syntropic agroforestry, water harvesting and drip irrigation, and biological pest and disease management — skills that keep the garden productive long after our team has left. In 2025 alone we established new kitchen gardens at CCM Ontulili (¾ acre, in partnership with Stevenson) and Murungai Comprehensive (559m², in partnership with Metis).
WHAT'S INCLUDED
- Site assessment, soil testing and land preparation
- Fencing and a gated kitchen garden enclosure
- Water tank, raised tank structure and drip irrigation
- Vegetable beds (kale, spinach, managu, terere, onions, chilli and more), legumes and cereals
- A fruit orchard (avocado, banana, guava, apple, pomegranate, passion fruit) and school woodlot
- Biomass and soil-building species (calliandra, leucaena, sesbania, vetiver)
- A five-day training programme plus a year of monthly follow-up visits
KEY STATS TO FEATURE
- 2 new kitchen gardens established in 2025 alone, feeding school lunch programmes
- Gardens sized from an eighth of an acre up to three-quarters of an acre depending on a school’s need
Other related programmes
Miti Schools Programme
Environmental education, tree nurseries and orchards in Kenyan schools.
Miyawaki Forests
Dense, fast-growing native micro-forests on school and community land
Miti Museum
A living seed bank and tree museum at the foot of Mt Kenya, open for tours, training and stays
Be part of a lasting change
Fund the next forest, garden or classroom.
Every gift goes directly to a specific, budgeted need — a water tank, a fence, a season of seedlings, a forest. Choose a school below, or fund what's needed most.