Vision

We chose to build/plant a pollinator garden at our school. We currently have a large outdoor space that has very few trees or plants. We have a large grass field that is unusable for most of the year, as we tend to have wet, slushy winters followed by rainy springs and we have nothing to soak up all the water. When students do go out on the field, there are not many places for students to enjoy nature – just a few trees at one end of the field, which is actually an area that is off limits during recess as it is so far from the school building. We hope that by planting a garden we will provide a space for students to learn in, about, and for the environment. We will invite classes to join our Eco Club in learning about native Ontario plants in our garden and to help us maintain the garden through weeding, watering, and planting new species when necessary. We will also invite students in all classes to observe the pollinators visiting our garden.

We hope that the garden will become the hub of a new outdoor learning space/classroom at our school. In the next school year, we are hoping to raise funds to add additional elements to this outdoor classroom: rocks, stumps and logs that can be used as seating and for climbing. We also are looking into getting additional shade trees planted so that we can have nice places for students to work during hot and sunny weather.

Action

The garden is a 17 x 22 foot butterfly-shaped raised bed that will feature 143 native Ontario pollinator plants. We partnered with a parent volunteer to design the bed, and our parent and community volunteers helped us to build the bed. The planting design was put together by Butterfly Way, who will be providing many of the seedlings to us and bringing in their team of volunteers to help us get the plants in the ground. Some plants we started from seed in the classroom and students have been nurturing over the last few weeks. We will be planting all seedlings on June 9th at a community planting event!

In preparation for our garden, we invited the Hamilton Naturalists Club into our school to give presentations about pollinators and pollinator gardens. This helped many of our students learn about the types of animals we hope to see visiting our garden.

Reflection & Celebration

We are still looking forward to our planting day and all the joy and celebration that will come from this event! We have seen an amazing response from the community already – parents and community members stopped by while we were building to find out more about the project and ask how they could help. We had all positive feedback from the community and they were so excited to see us adding to the natural environment at our school. A lovely neighbour stopped by to tell us that she walks her dog every day in the area and alwasy rests on the rock that is situated by our garden. Now, she is looking forward to spending that time enjoying the garden as she rests. I think that this story is the perfect example of how a garden can bring joy and a sense of collaborative community spirit to the neighbourhood!