Our work engages high school youth in Massachusetts and Louisiana in transdisciplinary learning of computational science, artificial intelligence, engineering, and restorative ecologies through the installation of automated urban gardening robots that we are calling restorative gardens. These gardens offer an opportunity to bridge traditional gardening and 21st-century technological skills while fostering community engagement by supporting youth in using emerging technologies to address critical issues such as food security. Drawing upon an emancipatory community design and research approach, our work involves youth in participatory action research in which they use research methods to make sense of and address social problems of community food insecurity by building and programming restorative gardens in their local communities. We focus our recruitment on youth who have been historically excluded from STEM fields and youth who do not have a particular interest in STEM. As such, a key aspect of our work is the longitudinal research of student identity and interest development. This is similar to our prior work where we have been tracking the impact of participation in our programs over two to three years.