In the agroecology/horticulture program, students learn principles of ecology in agriculture by practicing on their own organic garden during the year. The program has been thriving at the school for almost eight decades. While the name and focus of the class has changed over the years--animal husbandry is no longer a part of it--biology teacher Les Kishler says its longevity is significant.

"This may be one of the oldest agriculture-related programs in the state in K-12 schools," he said. He has been doing his own research to find out about the history of the department to see if anything else predates it by talking to alumni who graduated during the 1930s.

Kishler has been teaching horticulture at Los Gatos for 11 years. He was an engineering student at UC-Berkeley during the 1960s, but because of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's book about the effects of chemicals on the environment, he changed direction. He studied ecology and became a biology teacher. He said one goal of his class is to impart to his students a sense of how humans are connected to other organisms on this planet.

"We're part of the food chain. Without that [plant] base, we wouldn't be here," he said.

The class is divided into classroom lectures and outdoor hands-on work. The students learn how to transfer seedlings, what angle to cut when pruning and how to make a soil mix, and they put into practice what they have learned. Weeding and watering are their responsibilities. Students aren't graded on whether their plants grow successfully but on whether they've tried to plant what the curriculum calls for.

Each fall, students plant their seeds and are required to keep at least one plant from the garden that they have inherited from their predecessors. As the recent bout of warm weather was a reminder that spring is just around the corner, splashes of color are everywhere now. White cauliflower heads and ornamental kale with purple leaves are flourishing. Kishler promised that by the end of the school year, all the gardens will be full, with some 40 different types of plants and flowers.

"Part of ecology is the concept of bio-diversity," he said. "I try to emphasize planting too much rather than too little. The more things you have, the healthier the ecosystem is."

The students' work will not go to waste the summer when they are on vacation. During the summer, community members adopt and maintain the gardens when the students are away.

Some of the students begin the class not knowing much about plant life, but Kishler said they walk away with some appreciation of how to keep up a garden.

"I didn't know much, but now I can go home and help my mom," said junior Nicola Porter, aerating the soil in her garden. She said she's become attached to the dandelions, lettuce and cabbage in her garden.

"Things are alive and healthy," she said. "It makes me more excited to work on it."

Kishler said one value of the class is that it gives students a break from being in the classrooms all day and allows them to relax, even if it's just 30 minutes at a time.

"We work with our hands, and we get to hang out in the fresh air," said junior Eddy Balderas, pruning the rosebushes in front of the school so they are ready for graduation. This project is part the community service requirement for the class.

Students say they enjoy the class because it's a combination of manual labor and relaxation. Some come during the weekends to work on their garden. During one recent class, senior Keith Ongman was in the greenhouse watering his classmates' seedlings. He was watering gently as if it were raining, just as he had learned in class.

"They should make this class bigger by adding more periods," he said.

Kishler said the horticulture program has endured for so long because of the tenacity of past teachers who made sure it didn't go away when other departments were disappearing. This area's history is another reason for the program's long life, he added.

"The roots of our valley are in agriculture," he said.

The recent warm days have been good for the plants, and Kishler has been reminding his students they need to balance the warmth by giving the roots something to drink every day. He also hopes the students have soaked up something that can be emotionally fulfilling while learning how they are related to the world around them.

"As important as businesses and computers are in high tech, just as important is what's sustaining us as human beings," he said.