Yerba Buena Learning Gardens

The Yerba Buena Gardens provides a wide assortment of delights for children, with the Zeum museum, the carousel and Paul Lanier's 10-foot-tall Wishing Tree. But what parents might not know is that on weekends Yerba Buena Gardens also offers Learning Days, a year-round series of free workshops and events designed to foster the green thumb.

"It's one of the best kept secrets in town," Mary McCue, the general manager of Yerba Buena Gardens, says of the program that has been quietly teaching urban kids the basics of gardening for almost 10 years.

"It started when we were taking a group around on a tour of the Yerba Buena Gardens," she recalls, " and we had a little boy in the group who said he was going to start a garden, too. He said he was going to plant tomatoes and carrots ... and lamb chops. And I thought, 'Oh my, we need to teach these kids about gardening!' "

Read more on the SF Chronicle site.