Vision

Our vision for Canada is to have indoor and outdoor gardens and green spaces that provide places to enjoy the beauty of nature, engage in mindful activities and sustain the community with pollinator plants and food plants. We hope to plant foods that we can use to support our school Breakfast program giving our gardens a purpose. If our school community grows and maintains gardens with fresh produce, we can reduce the amount of plastic packaging that we use. This is important to us and our school community because we care about our environment and the impact we have on the environment. It is our hope that through the planting of pollinator plants, and provision of fresh home-grown produce, our school and students will continue to benefit from the increased attention to student-led eco initiatives over the years.

Action

After attending the LSF Youth Forum on Climate Action, our students engaged in discussions of how we could use some of the knowledge to improve or support our school community. Our students were interested in increasing the amount of perennial plants within three key outdoor spaces on our school grounds and inside our school using the Tower Garden hydroponic system. We decided to focus our planting within the outdoor classroom (to create an inviting and beautiful learning environment), the front gardens (to create a safe haven for pollinators), planters by the kindergarten learning space (to provide fresh produce for our students) and the indoor Tower Garden (to provide fresh produce for our students). In particular, students were interested in using these plants as a way to provide nutritious, locally-grown food for our school’s breakfast program, while reducing the amount of single-use plastics used by this program. For example, students indicated that the purchased fruits and vegetables for the program often get delivered in plastic containers/wrappings; therefore, through growing some of our own produce, we could work to reduce the amount of plastic waste produced by our programming.

In order to meet this goal, students engaged in research about seasonal planting and produce, with a focus on the selection of fruits and vegetables would be best suited to planting in our gardens – taking into account seasonal temperatures, harvesting months, and the amount of sun/shade in certain planting areas. Students indicated that the growth of vegetables outdoors, in combination with our pre-existing Tower Garden system, could greatly reduce the amount of pre-packaged produce purchased for our breakfast program and therefore reduce our school’s waste output.

Our students indicated an interest in working to make our school grounds greener and more vibrant by planting pollinator plants that both beautify our outdoor spaces and contribute to a healthy, accessible environment for various pollinators. In order to meet this goal, students completed research about pollinator plants that would grow best in our local climate, focusing on finding some plants that could be maintained throughout the year in order to maximize their impact.

As an Eco Team, we communicated with our administration and parent council in order to create and share requests for community donations of gardening supplies (e.g. rakes, shovels), create a schedule for parents to become involved in planting alongside our students, and create a schedule for the school community to become involved in watering and caring for the plants over the summer months in order to ensure their longevity while students were on summer vacation.

Our students have planted some seedlings of Basil, Arugula and 3 types of lettuce for our indoor Tower Garden. We have since purchased the plants for the 3 outdoor spaces and will be planting them in the next few days.

Reflection & Celebration

Our students have been given the opportunity to learn and grow was leaders. Through their project they have been able to put in action the learning form the Youth Forum. We have given them a voice to take ownership of some school spaces and to connect to current school initiatives like the Breakfast Program. They are excited to continue the next steps of planting and caring for the plants to see their vision become a reality. We are proud of our students for the work they have done in such a short period of time and we look forward to helping them continue their efforts for a healthier, more sustainable school community. We hope to be able to enjoy some fresh produce from our Tower Garden before the summer starts!