School Garden

Elementary - James F.

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In elementary grades, one of the biggest challenges is finding a way to share the work in the garden.  In our school we practise square foot gardening to give each student ownership over their own square or two.  We still work together to weed and water, but I find students out at recess tending to their own square because they care about it more.  This also gives them choice, as they get to choose exactly what to plant. 

By far the biggest challenge for our elementary school is tending to the garden during the summer months, especially because not many of our families live near the school.  We advertise each year, asking for volunteer families to sign up for a week of watering and weeding.  Depending on the size of your school, you may need more volunteers.  This gives families some ownership over the garden without them making too big of a commitment. 

 

Middle Years - Sorel G.

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One of the biggest challenges that we’ve encountered in middle years is creating and keeping student interest surrounding our learning gardens. Gardening is hard work and often a slow process, two things that middle years students do not like. To help maintain interest, we try to update the student body on the garden as much as possible. This is done through pictures that are posted to our school website, blurbs for the morning announcements, sharing of great lessons that have happened there and by encouraging staff to use the outdoor space as much as possible.

 

We’ve also tried to include students in the planning process, this helps them to take ownership of the garden and hopefully develop a sense of pride surrounding it. We’ve included students by: getting help with the physical labour, design of the garden, creation of benches in the wood shop, a design project to paint our garden box (it’s made of concrete) and are getting volunteers to help maintain it over the summer.

 

To encourage more traffic in and around our garden, we’ve also created an outdoor space with benches and an outdoor chess or checkers board for the students (and staff!) to use. The students created the chess pieces in woods class and this encourages positive interactions with the garden and outdoor area.

 

Secondary - Jennifer P.

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Depending on the size of the school, there can be other unique challenges that hinder the progress of a school garden.

 

At the secondary level, there are often a wide variety of courses and activities offered each year. Communicating the value of a school garden to a large staff can be difficult.

 

At our school, we have a large and diverse staff. Though many said they might be interested, finding the time to actually get involved was difficult. Collaborating with others is so important for a garden project to work.

 

With over 100 staff members, there are 3 colleagues that have been incredibly helpful and strong members of the garden project team. Several others visited or expressed interest but despite repeated requests have not been able to participate.

 

Release time is important not only in the initial planning stages but also to encourage teachers and their classes to use the garden.

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Finding a water source has also been a challenge. Our closest water tap is in a location that is not at all conducive to growing a garden. This presents a challenge in terms of watering as we built in a location that was excellent for plant growth.

 

Over the summer the job of watering has to be shared and we do have students who are willing to come but they can’t access the school water source. We are looking at alternatives. The space we chose is also lacking in terms of landscaping. It is near our baseball diamond and not a super nice space. If we want teachers and students to come down and enjoy being outside, I think we will need to work on making it an outdoor classroom combined with garden so that it becomes more functional and easier to use.

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