We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christina Nicodemou a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Christina, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

We are long overdue for a complete re-design of the school system. It would be wonderful to see a learning environment developed for children that is set up for enriching exploration, authentic collaboration and real-life experience. It seems as though obedience and testing have become prioritized in standard schooling. Particularly for early childhood and early elementary education, I believe it is vital for children to have autonomy and freedom to move and explore at their own pace in order to build a strong foundation of Self. Young children must be supported in their natural abilities to learn the life-long skill of decision making and risk-taking. So often, school systems remove the freedom of this for children and rules and standards become the priority. Having less time constraints and uninterrupted experiences to climb trees, explore open-ended arts, build things, play in nature, commune with the interconnectedness of our environment…. this is vital in healthy early childhood development. There is plenty of time for academic curriculum when a child is older (after age 8). We must not forget the simple joys are the important “work” of childhood! In later years of education, preparing students for real life should entail learning skills in financial management, entrepreneurism, leadership, communication and emotional intelligence. I have always enjoyed traditional academic subjects such as Math, Language, History and Science, but we could certainly see an edit to these curriculums to include more creative and truthful approaches. For example, math can include the ancient tool of the abacus and hand-held items for visual learners and history can share facts from a decolonized perspective.

I appreciate many philosophies of education, including Rudolph Steiner (Waldorf), Maria Montessori, and Reggio Emilia. Current leaders in education and play such as Peter Gray and John Holt, have had a life-changing influence on my beliefs. It would be a dream to see a collective union of world educators, scholars, child psychologists and youth leaders commissioned to create an eclectic and progressive philosophy that is the new standard for education. It is time for a complete overhaul! Every summer I see families in our community completely stress out over the question of where to send their child to school. The complex variations between public, private, charter, alternative schools and homeschool can be daunting. Choosing education for your child should not be so confusing and stressful. I know parents that drive an hour away each weekday and afternoon to suit their child’s need with a school choice. On top of that, many impressive private schools are completely out of reach to families financially, even if they qualify for the state issued scholarships. The world needs to focus on a healthy median of education that is accessible to all and inspiring/enriching for our future leaders. Society should be preparing our youth for healthy and fulfilling personal lives (including nutrition, relationship-building and self-awareness… not just careers) and also be preparing the next generation to be capable, confident and inspired to meet the current and future needs of our society!

My partner and I chose to homeschool our four children since the very start. One of the main reasons I resonated with this choice is because I did not feel comfortable with any of the other options. Each year I visit schools, both public and private, with my children and we thoroughly research options in our area in hope to find some interesting alternative. After many years, we have not found anything that have been a match to our values. The one or two interesting options that may have been interesting are out of reach due to pricing, even with a scholarship. I was inspired to meet the need of our community by providing alternative education options for homeschool children and families. As the Director of the Delray Beach Children’s Garden, a non-profit community garden with a diverse educational program whose mission is to nurture eco-consciousness, I created a homeschool co-op that offers inquiry-based learning in a 100% outdoor setting. Our educators collaborate to create a fun, flexible learning environment for children ages 3-10 to explore science, math, language, art, history, horticulture, plant-based cooking, mindfulness and more! I truly feel like our team is preparing our students for a fulfilling life because we support their inherent gifts and skills to create, explore and learn more about what interests them. They learn to regulate their emotions while socializing and problem-solving in a mixed age group and they use their bodies to engage in their environment through play, which enhances wellbeing and supports development. We feel confident that our program is a positive change in our community to offer alternative, progressive education to families and we are hopeful for a big change in the greater education system.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I was born in NY to a Greek-Cypriot father and French-Canadian mother. I moved to South Florida 15 year ago seeking a tropical lifestyle and slower pace. I have been a nature lover and plant enthusiast for as long as I can remember. In high school, my first job was at a local plant nursery and I loved learning about all the flowers, shrubs and trees. In college, I studied Business with a focus on Organizational Behavior. I always recall my Entrepreneurship class because we had the project of writing out a full business plan and I decided to develop a garden design business just for fun. At the time my father and I were installing pollinator gardens at his public school where he was a teacher. He was retiring and decided to start an artistic, garden design company to keep him busy and connected with the community. I enjoyed working with him and soon developed my own consulting services with the addition of garden design services! I focused on female entrepreneurs in NYC and Miami and analyzed their marketing/branding, financial overview, staff management and the design aesthetics of their companies (which always needed more plants!) After 12 years of working with boutique owners, spas, cafes, and holistic providers, I found myself working in the non-profit sector and I never looked back. Writing grants to support youth outreach programs became my new passion and I found meaning in giving back to the community. When my partner and I relocated to Delray Beach with our young children I discovered the Delray Beach Children’s Garden and began to volunteer my services there. I have learned so much about the benefits of nature play and early childhood development from our co-founder Shelly Zacks, an early childhood educator. This amazing botanical garden was created to nurture eco-consciousness in children through garden education, nature exploration and outdoor play. The garden offers field trips, early childhood nature play classes, plant-based cooking workshops, gardening classes, volunteer service projects for youth and community events. Through grant funding I helped secure as a volunteer consultant, they were able to offer me a position as the Executive Director and I have had the pleasure of serving and growing this organization for 6 years. We have since quadrupled our numbers and serve a much broader community through our expanded services. I developed the Nature Education Cooperative, a STEAM homeschool cooperative that offers an enriching 3-day nature school at the garden. Participants tend the garden, harvest food for garden-to-table cooking, experiment with science projects and delve into play-based learning where they can engage in math, language, history and the arts. I am proud of the garden for growing to meet the needs of the community and continuing to provide innovative, nature-based learning for our community. We have an amazing team of educators, gardeners and leaders that contribute their passions. It truly takes a village! Our loyal members, sponsors, donors and volunteers continue to show our organization support and let us know that our garden is an important nature oasis and learning center for children in South Florida.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

One could say I was destined to meet Shelly Zacks, co-founder of the Delray Beach Children’s Garden. On January 2, 2015 I was struggling with postpartum depression after the birth of my second child. I was on maternity leave and living in a new city across the country, isolated from friends and family. After ringing in the new year, I felt compelled to make some drastic changes to my life and considered a move back to Miami Beach in South Florida. I thought maybe a children’s garden would be a great new business venture so that I could combine my business experience, love for gardening, and still be able to be a present mother to my two young children. I googled Children’s Garden Delray Beach because a dear friend had told me that Delray Beach was a really nice community they thought would be a great fit for my family. Low and behold, there was a children’s garden launching their grand opening on January 3, the very next day! The next morning I called the number listed and introduced myself as a passionate gardener with experience consulting non-profits with fundraising and grant-writing. I said I was interested in potentially moving to Delray Beach but was currently in Austin, TX. Two weeks later, Shelly Zacks called me back and told me that the children’s garden had an epic turnout at their grand opening and asked when could I come by to help! She was excited to hear from me and knew intuitively that the garden was going to grow quickly. I reminded her that I was all the way across the country but that I would be in Delray Beach in a month to check out the area. Upon my visit to Delray Beach with my family, I felt an instant connection to the community. The beaches called me back to South Florida, the nature trails and wetland environmental centers were abundant and the downtown area with their weekend farmer’s market gave me a good vibe. Delray seemed to be a perfect for our family. When I visited the garden I immediately felt inspiration and wonder. My children ran around barefoot and we all learned about the interesting plants they were growing. I began to feel creative, motivated and positive. It was a relief after the hard months of postpartum depression I had experienced. I felt like I found my new community instantly when I had the pleasure of meeting Shelly Zacks in her wonderland of a garden. I was eager to help the organization grow. Six years later I can affirm that she is my chosen family. She has been a wonderful being who has positively influenced my life and changed the trajectory of my career. She is an inspiring business partner and we love collaborating on the growth of this organization together.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Often times in life (and business) you need to assess your direction and set boundaries. Are you headed in the right direction? Are you focusing your time on the most important parts of your vision? Are there tedious systems in place that are zapping any of your team members’ energy? Are you spending your time being as productive as you would like to be? Is your team working at their fullest potential and do they have the autonomy to really use their skills to take it to the next level? Are there areas of your business that can be more self-sufficient or automated to reduce admin time? Do you have enough staff to prevent burnout of your top team?

These are the multiple questions that many of us encounter when running a small business/organization. It’s common to become side-tracked with some of these complexities when they arise in business. It is vital to check in with yourself, your team and follow your intuition to reset the most direct path to achieving the success you collectively envision. Setting boundaries is something we learn to do better year after year as a team. As a non-profit organization our net of services was widening and there was a time that we had to assess whether we needed to provide more variations of our services. Streamlining it to the 4-5 most popular programs helped us to carve out our niche and pour our passion into that. Setting some guidelines can be really helpful for the team. For example, we used to have so many ideas for programs pitched to us from community members or partnering organizations and instead of deliberating on them all, our team set the guideline to ask themselves these two questions first: 1. Does it serve children? 2. Is it nature-based? If the answer to either of these questions is NO then it is not a fit for our mission and organization. It’s that simple. We are so blessed to share nature with children and grateful that our garden programs are so sought after by our community. We continue to simplify, pivot, vision and co-create with our team and partners to offer innovative and engaging nature education programs for young people.

Contact Info:

• Website: dbcgarden.org
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/delraybeachchildrensgarden