Vision

We feed about 200 students breakfast, snack, lunch daily at Elwick. As you can imagine, this is a lot of food being served to our kids, a lot of money from our school budget, and a lot of single use packaging waste. Our vision was to build school gardens which could be maintained and accessed by both students in our school, and our larger community. The vegetables and fruits grown in this garden could be used to support our food programs, resulting in less money spent on groceries, less single use packaging waste, and and more sustainable way to feed our school community.

Action

We designed garden beds that could fit behind the already existing benches we have at our Medicine Wheel in the front of our school. A small group of students went with a teacher to purchase gardening tools from Home Depot and Dollarama, and then to a Garden Centre to buy tomato, strawberry, onion, potatoe, bean, corn and squash plants and seeds. In the coming weeks, theses students, along with other classmates, will plant in our garden beds. Community members, teachers and custodial staff will maintain the gardens throughout the summer break, and students will take over this job, as well as the job of harvesting, when they return in the fall.

Reflection & Celebration

We are excited about our action project, and look forward to seeing how we are able to grow our own fruits and vegetables, and share our labour of love with our school community through our breakfast and lunch programs!