Vision

Our vision for Canada is…
To reduce our impact on the environment through a more sustainable lifestyle. To educate our school population (students, teachers, and parents) on how we all can reduce our carbon footprint by buying food seasonally and locally grown and by growing our own food.

Action

We are a group of 10, grade 7 students, and we will be primarily leading this project. We will share our knowledge of sustainable eating through announcements, classroom presentations, information updates on our school website. We will create planters that will be seen and accessible to the school population, to educate and empower each student in our school on sustainable eating. We will plant herbs and vegetables into the planters and then transplant them into our community gardens. We plan to harvest the vegetables and herbs when they are ready, and share them with students and teachers in the school, to educate them on how simple it is to harvest vegetables and herbs and inspire them to do their own. We would like to reach parents and the community during parent council meetings, school BBQs, or movie nights.

In the spring, we will research and plant herbs and vegetables indoors, in an area where students and teachers can see. We will transplant them into our community garden in June. We will invite the school community (families and school staff) to help care for the garden, including watering and weeding the garden, using our school rain barrels. We will also invite the school community to enjoy the garden through the harvest months.

Reflection & Celebration

Successes:
May 1: The vegetables and herb seeds are planted
May 9: Kindergarten classes discovered a community garden located at a nearby park where we could possibly rent a plot to transplant our vegetables and herbs. We will contact the Milton District Horticulture Society to find out more information about this. This may be a solution to our problem with the outdoor classroom construction.
May 10: The vegetable and herbs seeds in our indoor planters are beginning to sprout!
May 25 : We think that we are ready to transfer our vegetable plants to a garden outside…but where?
May 31: We decide to just go for it and prepare and transplant into our St. Benedict Community Gardens. We do it during recess so that other students can help. It was a happy time!
June 1: We received our 1000L rain barrel so that anybody can help care for our garden.
June 8: The herb plants are still growing indoors. We would like to transplant soon.
June11: Our vegetables are growing in our new garden.
June 13: We transplanted our herb plants outside. Our garden is complete! We can’t wait to watch it grow and enjoy everything that grows.

Challenges:
April 23: Beginning to learn more about what materials we really need and when indoor planting should have happened. We will consider this learning for next year.
May 4: Notified by administration that we will not be able to keep the plants in our school community garden through the summer because they are beginning the construction of our outdoor classroom. We may need to buy some temporary planters to along the wall on the west side of the school for this summer. We will need to decide our plan before the end of May.
May 6: Difficulty finding an appropriate rain barrel for an outdoor classroom.
May 7: Finding a spot within the school that is easily and readily enjoyed by the school population, while getting enough sun.
May 28: We announce to the school staff and classroom eco reps that we are not able to use our gardens this summer but are looking for suggestions on where to plant. The staff and students are very disappointed that we are not planting in our own gardens.
June 7: The plants in the vegetable garden are dying. After digging a little deeper, we think that we did not twill deep enough to get some of the ‘live’ soil to the top. Maybe we should have added more compost too.
June 8: We transplanted the vegetable plants that are still alive to a smaller planter. We hope that they grow!