Vision

Our vision for Canada is…To instill of love of nature and animals in our future generations and educate the school and community population about the importance of biodiversity within our school grounds. The issues that are being addressed is the lack of biodiversity contributing to the endangerment of insects and animals in our immediate area. This is an important issue in our community as we are affected by large farming and paper mills/factories in our area and this project is helping raise awareness of the issues surrounding deforestation and pollution.

Action

To make our vision come true we have involved students and our local garden centers to research plants that will best attract butterflies and bees. After this planning stage we purchased the plants, soil, and manure to beautify our school grounds. Finally we have planted some and will continue to plant more as the weather becomes warmer. Our project addresses the local issue of a lack of biodiversity within our school environment. In addition, many of our students have not had the opportunity to plant and be involved within a gardening environment therefore this has sparked interest in the issues. Youth leadership was highlighted as the junior students have been are being coached to assist the primary student in planting and garden upkeep.

Reflection & Celebration

Weather is our biggest challenge. We were all very excited to plant the seeds and flowers once we purchased them, however the nights were still going down to 1 with frost warnings so we planted some of them too early and had to cover them at night. The second challenge was determining where to place each flower in the bed, we had to research this and the students really had to read the information cards that come with the flowers to make informed decisions on where to place the flowers. Also, our school contracts out to lawn care providers who in the past tend to mow down many things in sight so we had to factor that into our placement as well.