Vision

My grade 6 students were upset with the overgrown garden in our school yard. All gardens and garden boxes had been neglected over the last few years. After learning about the carbon footprint our food creates getting shipped in from all over the country and internationally, they wanted to grow some food closer to home. They wanted the gardens to help contribute to clean air and bring joy to our whole school. In our biodiversity unit, they learned about habitats, animals and insects that rely on gardens, such as worms and bees.

Action

We set out to first dig out the overgrown gardens. We were then sad to learn we had to replace many of our garden boxes. In turn, replacing the garden boxes led to more learning and more community involvement. Our custodial team taught us how to use tools to measure and we learned about levelling!
We were finally ready to play and continue weeding our front gardens. We planted strawberries/lettuce/rhubarb/bee balm and some perennials in our boxes and gardens. The students even brought in some gnomes to hide in the garden to bring more joy to the younger children.

Reflection & Celebration

Our project brought out many teachers and other students! The grade 8 class helped us to carry the heavy dirt! The custodians helped us build! Parent and grandparents volunteers helped us learn about gardening and helped us break up the hard gardens. The local horticultural society gave us support in the way of knowledge and ideas. They plan to visit us to check on the gardens next month as well!
Our class has learned so very much! The can’t wait to eat from our garden and plant more plants and food next year!