Food-insecurity is still a serious challenge globally. The United Nations indicates that 66 million school going children attend classes hungry in the developing world. Although policies such as the National School Nutrition Programme are in place in South Africa, implementation challenges exist at school level and are exacerbated by inadequate funding by the Department of Basic Education. Existing implementation challenges threaten food security at school and community level, and make school food gardens a vital food security enhancement strategy. School food gardening ensures own production to supplement food items bought by schools to feed the learners. However, the question of school food garden sustainability has not received adequate research attention in South Africa. This paper reports the outcomes of an investigation on the sustainability of school food gardens in Chris Hani District. The purpose of the investigation was to broaden the empirical database on the sustainability of school food gardens. The paper adopted a mixed research approach. A purposive sample of six schools drawn from the local district was used as a data source. Questionnaires, interviews and informal observation were the main data collection instruments. Descriptive statistics and the themes developed were used to analyze quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Findings revealed bottlenecks that hinder sustainability of school food gardens, which include funding and lack of proper planning of school food gardening activities. In conclusion, strategies for achieving viable and sustainable school food gardening including the need to make proper school garden plans were proposed.

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