Environmental science students during fall semester conducted a four-month long research project growing food plants at school using organic methods. A survey conducted by an earlier environmental science class helped to determine which plants to grow and our many gardening teachers and student families provided plants: 6 kinds of basil, rosemary, lemongrass, garlic chives, mint, Vietnamese balm, Mexican oregano, Cuban oregano, jalapeno, cayenne, Thai pepper, and bloodleaf (used in Hmong chicken soup), among others. The students chose a name for the school’s new glass corridor (“IA/LEAP Sunspace and Research Lab”), made a sign for the entrance and filled it with their plants. The students each had at least one food plant to care for and measure, and they kept detailed data logs. One day twenty ladybugs emerged from geranium pots elsewhere in the school. The students caught them and released them on their pepper plants, some of which had aphids, a favorite food of ladybugs. In January, the students traveled to the University of Minnesota’s Biological Sciences Greenhouses to learn more about organic methods and to see other plants from their home countries. There, and later at Como Conservatory, they made lists of English and scientific names of plants they recognized and recommended for the school’s indoor and outdoor gardens. It is always exciting when the students get to see, touch or smell a plant from home, like the day that Cuban oregano came to IA /LEAP last November. All that day, students from various East African countries recognized the aromatic plant and told stories about it, from how it provided food for goats to how it had cured a mother’s illness. The current semester’s environmental science class will focus most of their research efforts on the area of energy conservation at school but will also continue the food plant focus, by propagating, growing and measuring an even more diverse group of herbs for next year’s research. They will all also get to take home plants at semester’s end. And when the weather warms, fall semester students will be bringing their plants home.