For the past 8 weeks, we ran our first full daycare pilot at Small World Learning Center in Blaine, Minnesota. Pre-school and pre-K classes (about 10 to 20 kids each) planted dwarf sunflower seeds inside a custom Greenbridge grow tent and watered them every week. We learned a lot about the program, about our own gaps, and about what classrooms actually need from us. Here is the honest story.
Why a grow tent in a daycare in the first place?
Northern Minnesota has roughly six months of growing weather and six months of "the seeds are not going outside." If you want a preschool to participate in the spring bloom from seed to flower you need to bring the conditions indoors.
That is what a Greenbridge grow tent does. It mimics the parts of a growing season that matter most to a plant- light, airflow, temperature, and humidity inside a sealed, controlled space the size of a small bookshelf. It is the same principle that makes a greenhouse work, just sized for a classroom corner. The lights stay on long enough to act like a Minnesota summer afternoon. The fan keeps the air moving so stems grow strong. The controller keeps everything on a steady schedule.
For early-childhood educators, this changes what is possible. You can run a real plant unit in January. You can let 3 year-olds water a seedling in March. You can finish a sunflower curriculum before spring break, instead of crossing your fingers that the seedlings on the windowsill survive the radiator.
What we set up at Small World Learning Center
We installed everything on a Friday afternoon so the classrooms could open as normal Monday morning:
- A Greenbridge grow tent is sized 2x 4x 6 feet and fits against a classroom wall
- Full-spectrum grow lights on a timed cycle
- A circulation fan
- A controller that runs the lights and fan automatically
Monday morning, we talked each class pre-school and pre-K through a 15-minute introduction.
- Plants are alive
- Plants need light, water, air, and a little bit of soil
- How a seed grows and turns into a plant
- What is a grow tent
Then we asked each kid to be a plant scientist for the day.
Planting stations
We set up four stations and rotated kids through:
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Fill the pot with soil. A little messy, very satisfying.
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Plant the dwarf sunflower seed. One seed, push it down to the first knuckle, cover it back up.
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Water and label. A small cup of water, then a popsicle-stick label with the kid's name on it.
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Place it in the tent. Each kid carried their pot to the tent and set it on the shelf themselves. This step mattered — the plant was theirs.
We picked dwarf sunflowers on purpose. They sprout fast (so attention spans are rewarded), they have big leaves (so even 3 year-olds can point at the parts), and they flower at a kid-friendly height.
The next 8 weeks
Each week, the kids and the Small World staff checked on the plants together. They watered. They watched. They drew pictures of what was happening. The grow tent's clear window meant students could peek at their plant any time and observe how things were growing.
Staff handled the watering before and after weekends so the plants did not go dry on Saturday and Sunday.
What is changing because of the pilot
Going forward, every Greenbridge classroom installation is going to come with:
- A laminated weekly care card on the tent — exactly how much water, how often, what to look for
- A "long weekend" protocol — what to do before any closure of three days or more
- A complete accessory bundle — soil, pots, watering cups, drainage trays, soil bin, a clean-up mat, and the labels — instead of a parts list teachers have to assemble themselves
- A recommended water-source plan — because "where will staff fill the cups?" turns out to matter more than we initially thought
- A teacher-facing one-pager and a 5-minute video walkthrough so the program can run without us on site
In other words: if we are not standing in the classroom on day one, the kit needs to teach itself. That is on us, not on the staff.
Why this matters beyond one daycare in Blaine
About 1 in 4 American kids is enrolled in some form of childcare or preschool, and a large share of those programs sit in northern climates where outdoor gardening simply is not a year-round option. Almost none of those programs have a working plant-science setup, not because educators do not want one, every director we have talked to wants one, but because the existing options are either consumer hydroponic boxes built for kitchen herbs, or commercial grow systems built for cannabis. There is nothing in the middle that is built for a classroom with hands on education in mind.
That is the gap Greenbridge is built for. Our grow tent system is designed for urban farmers, educators, and communities. The pilot at Small World is the first proof point that the system actually works in the setting we designed it for.
How to get involved
If you run a daycare, preschool, elementary classroom, after-school program, library, senior center, or community garden — and you want to bring year-round plant science into your space — we would love to talk. We are taking on a small number of new pilot sites this summer and fall, and pilot partners get installation support, the full curriculum, and the same backup-plant insurance Small World had.
If you are a school district or municipality looking at STEM programming for early grades, we can quote a multi-classroom installation and bundle it with our K–2 curriculum.
If you are an investor, advisor, or partner who cares about the intersection of food access, education, and indoor agriculture and you want to support a Minnesota-built brand please reach out directly.
Email us at support@greenbridge-grow.com. We answer everything ourselves.
A small thank-you
To the staff and families at Small World Learning Center, thank you for trusting us with your space, your time, and your kids' first sunflowers. We learned more in 8 weeks with you than we did in the whole year before this pilot. The next site is going to be better because of you.
Cultivate Your Nature. Greenbridge · Blaine, Minnesota · greenbridge-grow.com
About Greenbridge
Greenbridge is an urban gardening and horticulture brand based in Blaine, Minnesota, operated by Two Bridges LLC. We design controlled-environment grow tent systems and standards-aligned curriculum for individuals, classrooms, and community spaces — purpose-built for food crops and education. Better Business Bureau accredited, Minnesota.
