Bittersweet Goodbye to Sauvie Island Center

We are sad to be ending our longtime partnership with The Sauvie Island Center as they move out of our service area and into the eastside. Fortunately, Sauvie Island Center will be continuing its work as it merges its programs under the umbrella of the Learning Gardens Lab in SE Portland beginning in early 2025. 

West Multnomah SWCD has been a longtime funder of Sauvie Island Center, and since 2009 has supported its programming that brought thousands of students to the farms of Sauvie Island, with grant funding totaling nearly $100,000. One of West Multnomah SWCD’s grants continues to fund a garden manager for Sauvie Island Center final projects through the end of the 2024-2025 school year. Read a feature on our work with Sauvie Island Center in our 2018-2019 Annual Report, p. 20. 

The Learning Gardens Lab is a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization formerly affiliated with Portland State University’s Leadership for Sustainability Education Master’s degree program. The new collaborative space is in SE Portland, which more closely connects to the students who generally visited the Sauvie Island Center with scholarships. The name Sauvie Island Center will be retired as the organization merges with Learning Gardens Lab and takes on that name.

We wish The Learning Gardens Lab best of luck, bountiful gardens, and student smiles in its new venture serving the east side.