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

Herbert, yup, I see your beautiful and healthy trees- sure looks like a lot of scaffolds! I would certainly recommend gradually thinning them, which is always a little difficult- the trees will often look lopsided for a time, no matter what scaffolds get removed. Still, a 4 scaffold tier is really generally the max or you wind up without enough light in the interior and adequate room for secondary and tertiery branching. I love your glysphosphate rings, by the way. Looks like you timed the aplication perfectly. After mid-summer you can let the grass and weeds return, and it looks like that's what you do.

Tim, Hardiness should not be an issue with the type of fruits you mention. KY is warm enough to grow just about any temperate fruits. As a general rule, hardiness starts to become a consideration for temperate fruits in Zone 5 or colder. You're probably in Zone 7. The plums you've chosen will not pollenize one another. Castleton is a European plum and Vanier is an Asian type plum. Sweet cherries can be difficult to grow in humid climates. Bacterial canker and fruit cracking are the most problematic in the southeast. Make sure White Gold has good resistance against these before planting it. Montmorency is a decent cherry for cooking, but know that it is very tart. For fresh eating there are sweeter "tart" cherries if you want a little more sugar in your cherries. One of the sweet tarts I grow is Balaton, not as sweet as a sweet cherry, but sweeter than Montmorency. Aurora probably isn't a good pear selection for you. Fire blight is a pretty big deal in KY and Aurora is listed as highly susceptible. There are lots of good fire blight resistant pears, so there's no reason to plant highly susc. varieties.

"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.