Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Dos Santos.
Hi Katie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Organic Garden Preschool really started with a few families who were searching for a preschool for our own children. We looked all across the Valley and couldn’t find exactly what we were looking for: somewhere small and warm, with lots of time outside and a real connection to the natural world. Then the opportunity came up for us to take over the space that would become OGP. At the time, the property looked very different. The soil was dry and depleted, almost nothing was growing, and there wasn’t much life happening outside. Over the last few years, we’ve slowly transformed it alongside the school.
Today, we have garden beds full of native and desert-adapted plants, trees and food crops, and a little menagerie of ducks, geese, turkeys, chickens, rabbits, and other critters the children help care for. Everything we do comes back to helping our children and families feel grounded in the Sonoran Desert and understand that this is an incredibly rich, living place.
In a lot of ways, the school and the land have grown up together, and I think that’s one of my favorite parts of our story.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Definitely not always a smooth road! I think starting any small business comes with a learning curve, but running a preschool adds an entirely different layer. We’re not just business owners; we’re responsible for children, families, staff, animals, a garden, an old property, and all of the licensing and regulations that come with childcare.
We’ve had to learn a lot as we go, from navigating staffing and rising costs to keeping a garden alive through Phoenix summers and figuring out how to build the kind of program we envisioned within the realities of running a small school.
But I think some of those challenges have actually shaped OGP for the better. We’ve gotten really comfortable with adapting, trying something, realizing it doesn’t work, and changing course. The school we have today is much stronger because we’ve allowed ourselves to learn as we go rather than pretending we had everything figured out from day one.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Organic Garden Preschool is a small, nature-based preschool in Mesa serving children from toddlerhood through kindergarten readiness as well as homeschool enrichment. Our approach is influenced by Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio philosophies, but we’ve really made it our own by rooting what we do in the Sonoran Desert.
We want children to know the place they’re growing up in. Who’s land we’re on. (Onk Akimel O’odham & Xalychidom Piipaash) That means learning what grows here, tending our gardens through the desert seasons, noticing the birds and wildlife around us, and caring for our ducks, geese, turkeys, chickens, rabbits, and other little creatures that become part of our school community. A lot of our learning happens naturally while digging in the garden, collecting eggs, cooking together, making art, building outside, or simply following the questions the kids bring to us.
Community is also a huge part of what we do. We work with local co-ops and farm stores, Native Seeds/SEARCH in Tucson, and other nature- and play-based schools and homeschool groups throughout the Valley. We want our kids to see that learning doesn’t just happen inside their classroom. There’s this whole network of growers, educators, families, and organizations around them with knowledge to share.
What I’m most proud of is that OGP has developed such a distinct sense of place. It doesn’t feel like a preschool that could be picked up and placed anywhere else. It belongs here. It’s a little wild, very hands-on, deeply community-oriented, and unmistakably connected to the desert.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
Our biggest credit will always go to our teachers. They are truly the heart of OGP. They deeply love, care for, and nurture both our children and the land they spend their days on. They garden, get muddy, care for animals, follow the kids’ curiosity, and put so much of themselves into making this little school what it is. We simply wouldn’t be OGP without them.
A huge part of our larger community is the network of small businesses, growers, educators, and families in and around Downtown Mesa. Tiffany at Inspire Farms has helped us grow our little menagerie, Jon and Amanda at Proof Bread have supplied us with their delicious sourdough bread, and we share many families and connections with Dr. Kevin at Rooted Chiropractic just up the road. Beyond Mesa, Native Seeds/SEARCH in Tucson has supported our garden through a grant that provided dozens of Indigenous and desert-adapted seed varieties.
We also really value having other small schools in our community doing similar nature-based work. We appreciate what Vari and Twyla at Nature’s Path Montessori have created with their outdoor spaces and animals, and we’re happy to refer families to one another when one of our programs is full or closed. As our children age out of OGP, we’re big fans of Concordia Charter School, particularly Mr. James and the incredible garden program he’s created there.
And, of course, our families are a huge part of all of this. They volunteer, share their own knowledge and skills, and have really embraced the idea that OGP is more than somewhere you drop your child off each morning.
It really has taken a community to grow OGP, and we feel incredibly lucky to be part of the one we have here in Mesa.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.organicgardenpreschool.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/organicgarden.preschool/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/organicgardenpreschool
