Meet Our Team
Grace Julian
Executive Director
Grace Julian's love for gardening, dedication to teaching, and enthusiasm to work collaboratively have culminated in the founding of The Edible Classroom. With education from Penn State Extension’s Master Gardener program and experience as an Envirothon Coach, she enjoys bringing science to life in the garden. Her heart for bringing good things into children’s lives was put to the test when she started a grassroots initiative in her children’s elementary school...transforming an unused playground area into a learning garden. It was through this experience that she saw the value of establishing a partner organization to help schools accomplish their goals for learning in the natural world since it’s a task that becomes so much more.
Creatively engaging the minds and hands of students makes her heart sing. Nature opens a book that many children can enjoy reading if just given a prelude. Whether you like bugs, butterflies, eating veggies, feeling the warm sun on your face, or sitting in the shade of a Mammoth sunflower, a school garden opens the door to more.
You can find Grace in her happy place most evenings, walking around her garden at the end of the day, breathing in the fresh air and noticing all the little things that happened in the last 24 hours. Grace lives in Columbia.
Sarah Ludwig
Administrative Assistant
Sarah Ludwig has always said spending time outside is truly where she belongs! Being in nature is what makes her soul happy. Gardening was a hobby she and her husband started that they included their children in as they grew up. Over the years, they established a backyard compost pile and garden beds of your most common fruits and vegetables. Sustainable practices are also very important to her family. From recycling cardboard, paper, styrofoam and metal, to composting food scraps, they are always looking for ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle!
When both of her children went off to school, she sought out an avenue to put her teaching background to use in a new way. The Garden Educator job provides the opportunity to work with students and teach valuable information through hands-on experience that supports what they learn in the classroom and can also be transferred into everyday life skills. Combining her education degree with a hobby has been the perfect match and she regularly says, “I love my job!”
Sarah lives in Leola with her husband and two young boys. Prior to being a Garden Educator for The Edible Classroom, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education, a master’s degree in Language and Literacy and taught third grade for six years in the School District of Lancaster. She enjoys continuing to work with students in the district where she got her start as a teacher!
Angie Martin
Director of
Community Engagement
Angie Martin grew up in Lancaster County, where her love for growing things and the abundance that comes from cultivating your own food began at a young age. She has many cherished memories of gardening with her family and grandparents, who lived nearby. Along with enjoying the fresh produce they grew, they also preserved it for winter, sparking Angie’s lifelong passion for healthy, homegrown food.
Angie, her husband, and their three children live on a small farmette in Millersville, where they raise heritage breed pigs, layers, broilers and occasionally other animals for her son's 4H projects. They practice regenerative farming and are eager to expand both their livestock and vegetable gardens in the future. Angie also enjoys exploring and experimenting with different gardening techniques.
With an associate degree in Occupational Therapy, Angie has worked in a variety of settings, including mental health, brain injury, and orthopedics. Most recently, she worked with a company that provided indoor therapeutic gardening programs for seniors in retirement communities.
Angie loves being a part of the team, where, as the director of community engagement she is able to help connect the community to all the good work The Edible Classroom is doing!
Southeastern Pennsylvania is where Mary Antonelli calls home, but during her college years she was positively inspired to grow beyond her familiar surroundings. Her budding interests in environmental sciences and outdoor adventures carried her to New Hampshire, then Montana, where she earned a degree in environmental geo-science and biology. Each unique region also provided her with riveting perspectives on how community-building is rooted in interacting with nature.
Mary describes her career path as a beautiful cornucopia spilling over with expressions of variety. Entrepreneurship sprouted out of obtaining certificates of horticulture and landscape design from the Berkshire Botanical Gardens. On the fringes of the Chesapeake Bay, she worked as crew leader on a diversified certified organic vegetable farm, was a student teacher, a co-leader within her son’s youth organization, and also briefly served as the Program Manager and Home Horticulture Agent for St. Mary’s County Master Gardener Program.
Now in Lancaster, locally grown food, searching for vintage treasures, camping with family and friends, practicing yoga, and crafting continue to bring her joy. She currently operates a landscape design business and is grateful to step into a Garden Educator position with The Edible Classroom. She is thrilled to tap into the alchemy created when kids engage in the school gardens! She believes that their curiosity and hunger for daily discovery, freedom to get dirt under their fingernails, and witness to growing healthy plants that fuel healthy bodies are all epoch expressions that result from this meaningful work!
Mary Antonelli
Ashley Braungard
Ashley Braungard is thrilled to be a part of The Edible Classroom as a Garden Educator. She was born and raised in Lampeter and currently resides in Lancaster Township with her husband. Ashley obtained her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and her master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Millersville University. Some of her previous work experience includes working in family-based therapy, outpatient therapy, providing trauma-informed care to survivors of domestic violence, and working with people who have traumatic brain injuries. On the gardening side of things, she previously worked at a wedding venue as a gardener helping to create a beautiful space for people’s special day. Ashley has a passion for working with children providing psych-educational and social emotional learning groups, and she is excited to have her professional training and her gardening hobby flourish through The Edible Classroom.
In her spare time, you will find Ashley traveling, cooking, making charcuterie boards and homemade jams and bread with her husband, canning, gardening, and exploring the great outdoors. One of Ashley’s most recent accomplishments was obtaining her ServSafe certification in order to learn more about food safety when preparing and serving food.
Laura Heinl is a Garden Educator with The Edible Classroom. She sees great value in sharing sustainable practices, healthy nutrition, and the peace that comes with simply being in the garden with students. She started her career by working in the dental field for 16 years, then furthered her education by getting a BS in Public Health from The University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Her first gardening memories were ones with her grandma when she was a child. She recalls learning so much during those days just ‘doing chores.’ This time cultivated her love for plants, nature, and a peaceful environment. Laura has had her own garden during the seasons of adulthood and has since grown her passion for health, nutrition, and sustainability. She sees all of the lessons that she has learned to be a part of the cyclical patterns of nature.
Laura lives in Lititz, PA with her husband and two children. She enjoys being outside, cycling, gardening, making typical processed foods from scratch like sourdough, kombucha, and jam, cultivating things and helping people grow around her.
Laura Heinl
Melanie Hopstetter comes from a rich heritage of gardeners who made growing and preserving their harvested food a lifestyle. She was introduced to this at an early age and enjoyed the entire process from the first seed being sown in the ground, to the canning jars being filled. She continues to enjoy doing this in her own home to provide healthy food for her family. Sharing the knowledge of gardening that has been gifted to her by previous generations, with the children in her community, brings her immense satisfaction. She has a background as a medical assistant, has served for many years in children’s ministries, and volunteered in her own children’s school garden.
Melanie has a special interest in connecting with vulnerable children. She has received training through the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development to understand how to meet the complex needs of these children specifically. Her varied areas of service and training have provided her with the experience and joy of working with people of all ages and abilities. Meeting the individual needs of others is a priority to her as she serves her community. Melanie lives in Conestoga with her husband and four children.
Melanie Hopstetter
Marijo Sanson lives in Lancaster City with her 2 year old Labradoodle, Baxter. She enjoys hiking with Baxter everyday in county park. While hiking she discovers the beauty of nature all around. When not hiking she enjoys riding her bike, travelling and reading.
She recently retired from the School District of Lancaster as a fourth grade teacher. Marijo was instrumental in getting the garden at Hamilton, where she taught, established. This garden was one of the first gardens in the district. Today, she gets to work with the wonderful members of The Edible Classroom at Hamilton. She loves to see the thrill on children’s faces when they discover something in the garden. Here students aren’t being graded and feel comfortable in this environment. The garden is a magical place for all. She has learned a great deal working with the incredible team she is part of now.
Marijo has a bachelor of science degree in microbiology from Arizona State University and a teaching certificate from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.