Abstract

The main aim of our research was to map the current use of school gardens at primary schools in the Czech Republic, to determinate possible ways of integrating school gardens in teaching in the future and to confirm a hypothesis that school gardens provide suitable space for teaching at primary schools. Moreover, school gardens offer enough opportunities for the application of elements of inquiry based education. Total of 119 teachers from 119 primary schools and 44 students — future elementary teachers, studying at the Faculty of Education, the University of South Bohemia, took part in the research. The data consisted of filled-in questionnaires and of School Education Programmes. The results of our analysis of data show that school gardens are used for teaching at primary schools in all defined educational areas. School gardens are gradually transformed from the floricultural areas only to the areas which allow for integrating practical activities in different school subjects. Thus, school gardens seem to be suitable for the application of inquiry based education.