For the first time since the pandemic started, students at West Marin and Inverness Schools can eat produce from their school gardens. The Inverness Garden Club used a grant from the West Marin Fund to spruce up the gardens—and create a website for the Parent Teacher Student Association. “Science becomes very real when there’s a garden on school grounds,” said Barbara Jay, an at-large member of the club’s school committee. “Kids can experience how things really grow, and learn about nutrition.” The gardens act as outside classrooms, with children from preschool through first grade tending the boxes, and at West Marin School, the vegetables are used in school lunches and excess produce is sent home. Gilo Rodriguez, who has worked as a maintenance man at both schools for 17 years, built the gardens from the ground up. He said the strawberries, raspberries and carrots are the first items to get eaten as snacks. Although it’s not part of his original job description, he enjoys keeping up the plants and fruit trees, and some years, he teaches an elective in which students learn what it takes to cultivate a garden, beginning with proper soil. What isn’t eaten on breaks is used in the kitchen by his wife, Aracely, who cooks meals for the schools. The Inverness Garden Club—akin to the “grand old lady of West Marin,” as Ms. Jay put it—was founded in 1934. The organization has two committees, a community projects committee and a school committee; a scholarship committee has since become its own nonprofit. Both current committees have similar priorities: education and gardens. The school committee’s five members are all either teachers or parents of students at the schools, and their goal is start with small projects directed by recommendations from teachers and parents. The group raised $500 for future school projects at a pop-up sale of their blackberry jam last month. The goal is to “build up a war chest,” Ms. Jay said, while schools make up for lost time during Covid. The P.T.S.A. website, a way for the organization to communicate its goals and visions, is set to launch this week, said West Marin-Inverness P.T.S.A. president Mike Dumbra. Eventually, the group hopes to add a donate button so the community can contribute.