TerraCorps Spotlight: Anna Wellborn
Anna Wellborn (she/they) is CitySprouts’ 2026-2027 Youth Education Coordinator through TerraCorps. Since September, Anna has been working with both the Communications team and Garden Educators to develop projects for students and provide support with their lessons. She then draws on those experiences with students and schools to write updated and topical newsletters, blog posts, social media updates, and anecdotes from students while learning, keeping the wider CitySprout’s community up-to-date and engaged. Learn more about Anna below!
What originally inspired you to get involved in youth garden education?
I started working in garden education because of my own education and upbringing. I had the privilege of attending a semester-long high school program that focused on general ed through a lens of environmental stewardship and studies. I found that this program, and eventually my academic focus in college (Environmental Humanities), kept echoing an interest in environmental education that encouraged learning not just ‘about’ but ‘within’. I believe that especially for students like me who can struggle to learn in a traditional classroom environment, allowing students and educators to literally materialize answers to questions, to touch, smell, taste, feel, and nurture their learning materials necessarily makes quite an impact on learning and personal development.
What’s one important skill you believe gardening teaches kids that they can use outside the garden?
One important skill that garden education teaches kids is how much they can connect with and learn about the natural world. The wonderful thing about garden education is that students can ask questions about a huge variety of things in front of them: What do I do if a bee lands on me? What is that purple flower called? How do potatoes grow underground? Why does that plant smell like that? They then have a world of connections right there to follow up. For example, a question about flower petals can lead to learning about soil pH. Questions can easily lead to more questions and more connections, and eventually they have to some degree developed associations, relationships, or ongoing questions about the garden and the wider environment. Isn’t it so much easier to nurture something if you understand it?
What is one way you build connections with the students to make gardening more meaningful to them?
Explaining to a student that their bodies are made up of the stuff that’s all around them, that the water that they’re drinking was the same water that dinosaurs drank, or that their bodies literally contain stardust! Understanding that the body they know is theirs is actually invisibly exchanging with the material all around them helps students identify themselves in the wider world. Care that they have for themselves that’s instinctual starts to expand out from just themselves to living and non-living beings.
Learn more about Anna!
What’s the strangest food combination you secretly love?
I've always loved peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. Ideally on white bread with crunchy peanut butter and dill pickles. It’s like a salty, savory pb&j.
If you could live in any fictional universe, where would it be?
I would choose Lord of the Rings. I’m not that big of a fan of the books, but it’s kind of a roundabout way of living in New Zealand but also with magic.
What’s one item on your bucket list that you’re determined to check off soon?
Take a dance class in Cambridge!