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From the piece: Starting this week at Princeton Public High School, students can take gym class in the garden.

“I think it’s strangely enjoyable,” said Tim Vasseur, a Princeton sophomore, shovel in hand. “It’s definitely not easy to do or anything like that.”

Advocates for greener schools believe this is the first time public school students will receive physical education credit for garden work. The idea was conceived by Matt Wilkinson, a physical education teacher and a former wrestling coach who also has a background in horticulture.

“We’re giving students another option to mainstream physical education,” Mr. Wilkinson said. “How long is somebody going to play basketball or soccer? Gardening they can do their whole lives.”

Last fall, members of the community raised $1,500 and constructed 16 raised garden beds on school property. Now that it’s spring, students will get to work planting seeds, weeding, and turning compost.

“It gives people who aren’t that athletic — and I feel like I’m not — it gives them an opportunity to do something else,” said Kruthi Isola, a sophomore. “You learn how to do more than just play a game.”

From the piece: Welcome to the Princeton School Gardens program. Here, children regularly work in one of the district’s 15 gardens during school hours, preparing garden beds, planting herbs and vegetables and harvesting them when they are ripe. The students eat raspberries from their own raspberry plants, sample cherry tomatoes off the vine and take bok choy, kale and cabbage home to cook and eat.

“We made sure that everything in our herb garden was edible, and when the children go out there, you can see them eating fistfuls of flowers and plants — they’re just munching them right on the spot,” said Dorothy Mullen, a parent who was the driving force behind the school gardens project in Princeton, which started seven years ago.