Lots of good advice already. Quick crops, easy to pick and eat. Nothing that might look edible but is bad for you. Hope you get a few great helpers but set things up initially so you can maintain whatever you plant yourself. It must be kept neat, unlike some home gardens. Like luke_oh, I've had people who expressed a willingness to help but left after a short time. Frustrating....so start small. Focus on early spring crops and flowers (bulbs) and late summer plantings for fall harvest if you plan to primarily have classrooms visit the garden. I work part time at a school nature center/agriscience center. We have a garden area that we use for educational programming with elementary age students. Mostly, we try to plant the area in a way that is fun and "pretty" to lure the garden shy to to take a look....and get educated at the same time :) Several well planned signs can help with the education part. The attached photos show a few things we have tried. Herb wheels....herbs planted in among the spokes of a wheel from old farm machinery...ties in with our agriscience/farm theme and makes for some tasty cooking. A chef came and helped 2 classroom harvest, wash, chop (they loved using real knives), and cook a vegetable soup to eat. The herbs really added to the taste. Sunflower house.....found out later there is a children's book with that title that is very fun to read aloud with kids while sitting with giant sunflowers arching overhead. A double row of sunflowers screens the hideaway well. It gives you a chance to use some short varieties in the outer row that will bloom at kid height while still keeping the mammoths that are so awesome high above. Life cycle garden.....let various plants grow past normal harvest time and flower and produce seed. Lettuce and radishes are fun ones to do. Early plantings will produce seed in one season unlike some biennials like beets, carrots, and turnips. We have had kids harvest the radish seeds and plant the next crop with them. It's fun to see where the seeds come from and realize you don't always HAVE to buy them....although that is often easier and lessens the chance of crossed seeds. This garden was difficult to keep looking neat and pretty, but it is a favorite of mine. We tried for successive plantings to show several stages in the plant's growth. Barn and barnyard theme garden....ties in with our agriscience emphasis done by older students in a different area. It is fun to try to come up with plant names that have a tie in with the farm theme, ie. hen and chicks, eggplant, lamb's ear. We picked up a few inexpensive garage sale/thrift store items to enhance the animal name themes and decorate the planting. I've seen other gardens that have different themes they focus on......ie, outer space with cosmos, moon and stars watermelon.....you get the idea....maybe have children join in searching seed catalogs for cool names that would tie in with the theme....Oh, no, you might create an addict who spends inordinate amounts of time reading catalogs like I do! ABC garden...26 small areas each planted with things that start with each of the letters of the alphabet....makes for an interesting and creative exercise just to come up with the plant list....so far we are stuck with Xolhp for "X"....Phlox spelled backwards....a favorite of the dyslexic. Variety names and even letters within the plant names are sometimes used...ie table Queen bush squash for "Q". I've heard of people trying to do the ABC theme with only tomato varieties or pepper varieties or flowers. (Anyone have Quinoa, Xena lettuce or Xananthemum seed they would care to trade or share?) Pizza garden.....ingredients for pizzas....we had a sign up for awhile suggesting they hike over to the barn after their garden visit to see the pigs...growing pepperoni and ham for pizza :) I've seen salsa themed gardens and spaghetti themed ones, too. Just pick a kid favorite. Local farm commodities.....grow a small area with a crop that is grown by farmers in your area. What drives the farm economy in your state? Sorry this post is so long but maybe our experiences and photos will stir some more ideas for what would work in your area. I hope your garden does well and I hope many children come to see it and learn from it. It is amazing to see and hear how little many children and their parents know about where their food comes from. Time in your garden can give them knowledge to make good food choices now and later in life and can be alot of fun, too. Here is a link that might be useful: School garden 2009

If you want honey bees but do not want to make the investment in time learning how to care for them and then doing so, your best bet as mentioned above is to get in contact with your local beekeepers club (look online). Club members are always looking for places to put new hives. You could probably work out an arrangement where you get the hives placed for free and maybe a jar or two of honey. The beekeeper would usually keep the bulk of the honey to help pay for the quite substantial costs of setting up the hives, maintenance and equipment. Whether in fact the bees help much with the fruit trees depends on what else is available when they are in bloom. Honey bees tend to be specific to certain plants: when they find one major supply of nectar or pollen they like, they concentrate their energies on that and ignore other sources. I have found that my bees are all over my stone fruit but tend to ignore pears, with apples somewhere in between. On the other hand, when major sources of nectar are not available, as in summer, the bees will be very effective pollinators in your vegetable garden -- especially for things like squash and cucumbers. (Though bumblebees do a good job on these too.) You can attract more native pollinators like bumbebees by planting flowering plants that attract them. One other option is to get mason orchard bees. These do not live in big colonies like honey bees. They are sold in tubes, which you place out in the orchard. They are only active for a few months of the year, when fruit trees are in bloom, and focus their energies on fruit trees and do not roam far from the available trees. (Honeybees can fly up to at least two miles from their hives.) Bee for bee they are much more efficient pollinators than honeybees, and they are much, much cheaper to get. You can look them up on google using key words like "orchard mason bee". Their main drawback is that they will not pollinate your vegetables and if you only have a few fruit trees nearby there may not be enough food for them to survive and build a sustainable population.

"Reasonable" is subjective, but Lula and Homer are both off the beaten path a little bit and might be affordable. Also, Oakwood and Clermont are worth a look.

Well, first of all, plant what y'all like to eat! The hardiest fruit trees in our part of the state (I'm in southern OK) are the native persimmons and plums as both survive severe droughts. The native plums have small fruits suitable only for making jam or jelly. Native persimmons are very astringent but aren't bad after a frost or two has blackened them. Peaches, pears, apples, plums, apricots and cherries all grow here and they all have their problems. Apples and pears probably produce a good crop better than most other trees, but they are prone to fireblight, which can take them out (and often does) about the time the are large enough to bear fruit, which is very frustrating. There are some that are fireblight resistant, but none that are immune. Peaches, plums, nectarines and apricots (stone fruits that have a large pit or seed inside) are very susceptible to freeze damage. They bloom after reaching a certain number of chilling hours every winter and, if those chilling hours are reached earlier in the winter, they can bloom "early" and lose their flowers or fruit to "late" freezes. Cherries have the same problems as the stone fruits, although Montmorency seems to produce better than most others. I think I've heard some people say they have had good luck with Bing cherries. Here's some of the varieties that do well in Oklahoma: APPPLES: McLemore (fresh eating, cooking), Gala (fresh eating), Jonathan (fresh eating, cooking), Red Delicious (fresh eating), Golden Delicious (fresh eating, cooking) and Fuji (cooking). YELLOW PEACHES: LISTED IN ORDER OF RIPENING: Candor, Garnet Beauty, Sweethave, Earliglow, Rubired, Sentinel, Redhaven, Clayton, Cullinan, New Haven, Ranger, Glohaven, Jayhaven, Loring, Cresthaven, Brisco, Jefferson, Autumnglo, Ouachita Gold, Stark Encore, Parade, Flameprince and Fairtime. WHITE PEACHES: LISTED IN ORDER OF RIPENING: Erly-Red-Fre, Summer Pearl, Nectar, White Hale NECTARINES: LISTED IN ORDER OF RIPENING: Earliblaze, Redchief, Cavalier, Sunglo, Redgold. PEARS: L INDICATES LOW FIREBLIGHT RESISTANCE, H INDICATES HIGH. Some are from Europe and others are from Asia. EUROPEAN: Bartlett (L), Bosc (L), D'Anjou (L), Magness (H), Moonglow (H), Warren (I don't know if it has high resistance to fire blight or low to moderate resistance, but is is self-fruitful and doesn't require a pollinator), ORIENTAL HYBRIDS: Orient (H), Kieffer (H) There are some Oriental or Asian non-hybrids but they lack fireblight resistance. CHERRIES: Montmorency is the best here. Others are Bing, Stella and Northstar. PLUMS: EUROPEAN: Stanley, Bluefre, President; JAPANESE: Methley, Bruce, Ozark Premier And I didn't mention figs, but lots of people have them here. Most fruit trees give you a crop fairly soon. I bought peaches and plums from Lowe's in what were probably 5 gallon pots and they gave us fruit the second year after we planted them in early spring. A Redhaven we bought for my dad in February (from Lowe's, in the same size pot as ours) gave him about a dozen ripe fruit that first year. With peaches, plums, nectarines and apricots, you usually get a good harvest by the third year the tree is in the ground. Maybe someone else will tell you how long it takes pears and apples because I don't grow them here because of the fireblight issues and cedar apple-rust. Good luck, Dawn