For the first time in an official capacity, the Charlottesville High School Urban Farming program is providing food that was grown in its garden for meals in the CHS school cafeteria. 

On Tuesday, May 12, teacher Peter Davis and students from his Urban Farming and Marketing II class successfully harvested lettuce from 52 individual plants in the garden in the CHS Urban Farm and delivered them to the school cafeteria. 

Nutritional professionals cleaned and prepared the lettuce on Wednesday morning and will serve the lettuce in its chef salads as part of this week’s nutritional offerings at CHS. 

“We are excited about this partnership and look forward to featuring lettuce grown by the Urban Farming class in the chef salads served at CHS,” said Charlottesville City Schools Nutrition Administrator Carlton L. Jones. “This collaboration gives students the opportunity to see locally grown produce incorporated directly into our school meals.”

Being able to provide fresh produce to the school cafeteria was a proud achievement for Davis and his Urban Farming students as they come to the end of the 2025-26 school year. 

“It’s been our goal for the past few years to create a garden-to-cafeteria model.” Davis said. “We’ve had to focus a lot on the infrastructure of the school farm recently, but we are now poised to grow large quantities of produce and are excited to start featuring it in the cafeteria.” 

Davis is excited about the new partnership that will see the CHS Urban Farming program provide fresh produce to the school as part of a growing garden-to-cafeteria model.

“We are hopeful that our Urban Farming program can help alleviate some of the pressure of creating healthy and fresh meals for our students on a limited budget,” Davis said. “You can't get any more fresh and local than in the backyard of this school and my students are excited to see the food that they have grown from seed served up in the cafeteria.”