Week 10 - School Gardens

Kids at WestShore School (Colwood) in Greater Victoria will be getting a lesson in growing food sustainably from composting to harvesting. The WestShore Teaching Garden provides hands-on education for small scale agriculture practices. Candace Thompson, Garden Porgram Facilitator is providing basic survival skills in teaching children to grow their own food and learn how to use their own compost. This spring of 2009 continuing education programs and students of WestShore will get there first opportunity to learn and grow. Planter boxes and compost bins were build by carpentry students, including a bench for the garden. The vegetable bed was prepped over the winter and is ready for action this spring. From March to May students will plant, manage and grow food. A grass lawn has been transformed into 1050 ft. rows for vegetables. The produced food will be harvested and taken to market by student to acquired harvesting and business skills. A total of 6 planting beds have been allotted to students from Belmont Secondary, Colwood Elementary and WestShore Centre. School trips for students to visit local farms to learn about pruning, preserving and tools of the farming trade. In addition apple trees of different varieties are being acquired by Westshore as well. Each tree will produce food for five years. This is possible because of local funding. For example Island Chef Collaborative donated $1,800 to build a fence to protect the garden. A major challenge of a volunteer gardens is adequate watering. Also a grant of $8,000 from Community School Connections is supporting this project and has paid for materials as used by carpentry students. Learning to grow food is a valuable lesson which provides security and creativity. Turning a small space into valuable agriculture has many benefits. For more information go to http://www.learnforlife.ca/.

I think this is very valuable and should be incorporated not only in all schools but at home. It is a time of change and growing your own food is one of those major changes we should all be doing.

Green Collar

Source: Goldstream News Gazette, "Old skills for the next generation," News Article by Amy Dove