By Carrie Strohl | Lead Dirt Girl
Dear Donor,
Since our last report, we curated the blog posts written about Dirt Girls since 2016 as our Dirt Girl Diary. In honor of Women's History Month, I'm sharing a post with a biographical sketch of Jane Colden (1724-1766), first documented woman botanist in America. You can read the post here.
The idea that Jane was just ten years old when she first started collecting her plant specimens was of interest to participants of Dirt Girls Grow Indoors (2021), who themselves ranged from 7-11 years old. When asked why Jane had no formal schooling, these youth accurately inferred that even if school had been nearby, girls may not have had an opportunity to attend.
Even today, access to formal and informal opportunties to grow an interest in science are not widely available to young women. In a community like Napa, which is more than an hour away from the nearest botanical garden or science center, these opportunties are even more rare.
Dirt Girls Greenhouse is on the lookout for a location to build (literally and figuratively) a community that nurtures plant relationships as a gateway to botany and horticulture. We look forward to sharing our progress in the near future.
With appreciation for your support of this mission,
Carrie
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