SPEC School Gardens Program

The school year wrapped up at QE Elementary with a fantastic harvest festival.  Parent volunteers, classes and teachers baked bread, roasted potatoes, harvested greens, prepared salad, two types of hummus, blueberry muffins, and apple cobbler, and gathered in the courtyard to celebrate the years harvest. 

From just 4 plastic tubs, planted way back in the fall, and pretty much left alone in a sunny corner, all of this fresh garlic was harvested this week by a very excited kindergarten class.

Monday lunch time saw keen members of the QE Green Team harvesting the potatoes. The tubs were dumped out, and the kids enthusiastically rooted around, squealing with delight with every tuber and worm that they found - just like a huge treasure hunt. let them grow watch them flower wait for them to wilt Dump them out and dig around a sure sign of healthy soil the prize... 45 kg of fresh organic potatoes

One girl always came to school in perfect white clothes, and stayed perfectly clean.  On school garden project days all she wanted to do was roll up her sleeves, and bury her arms deep in the dirt - no planting, tasting, or harvesting, just bury her arms, and feel the dirt.  So on school garden project days, that is what she was allowed to do.  The look on her face was enough.

Participating Schools: Bayview Community School Brock Elementary Ecole Bilingue Grenfell Elementary Kitsilano Secondary Queen Elizabeth Elementary Thunderbird Elementary The program started in March 2009 as in 2 schools, and 190 students were involved in the garden. In 2011-2012 7 schools and 1050 students are involved. Each school has a different level of involvement, from a few classes, to the full school.  Some gardens are small, some are much larger.  All require the input of teachers, administration, students and volunteers, to make the program successful.   In some schools, the Garden Coordinator, Catriona Gordon, visits classes every few weeks, teaching grade-appropriate science components to the students, usually in the form on hands on workshops.  In other schools, her involvement is more limited to offering advice on establishing a garden.

Bayview elementary school garden is a little different - it's not on the school grounds.  It is over the road, tucked behind the community church.  And it is a real community garden by collaboration - on weekends the church water it, in the summer the kids club tends it, and during the school term, the grade 1 classes are responsible for it.