A school garden provides children with a natural and effortless way to learn. While a garden can visually enhance a schoolyard, it can also provide a calming and nurturing space for children to gather, retreat to and discover all the possibilities LIFE has to offer!
Services Provided to the School Included:
- Steering the committee of parent volunteers
- Presenting the project scope to the teachers
- Creating garden activities suitable for each grade level
- Solid communication between the principal, committee members and staff
- Facilitating Seed Planting Classes
- Coordinating activities for student classes to participate in the build of the garden
- Event Coordianation for the Opening Ceremony of the garden
- Main contact of the school to coordinate the build of the garden between the principal, district, and Home Depot
Garden Design
- Designed as an outdoor classroom, this edible school garden is one of the first in the Burnaby School District. Classes are able to sit inside the structure on raised benches with the teacher at the front of the garden to facilitate classes in Art, Math, Science, English, Social Studies, Health and Career or any other subject.
Student Engagement
This project engaged students at every grade level of the school starting with the Kindergarten 100th Day Celebration where children were given a power point presentation of "What to Plant in the Garden". At the end of the presentation, students were able to use stickers to choose which plants they would like to see in the garden pasted beside the names of the plants on a large poster.
- All classes participated in Indoor Seed Growing Lessons with Gardenworks.
Each division was responsible for the care of their trays of growing seedlings. When the plants were big enough, they were transplanted by parent volunteers and students to wait until their home garden was built.
Project Coordination
- A grant awarded to the Parent Advisory Committee from The Home Depot Canada Foundation, funded the build of the garden. Team Depot provided a main contact from a local Home Depot store and 3 volunteers to build the garden. Each class participated with the build from observing, moving of lumber, dumping soil, hammering and a math component estimating the perimeter, area and volume of the garden.
Forest Grove Art Mural Project for Primary Area
- Main contact between artist and school
- Scheduling of visionary classes with teachers and artist
The art mural in the primary area was designed to highlight the edible garden behind the school in a completely interactive and engaging way. With children as young as 2 yrs old attending the Strong Start Program, walls were now a place to count ladybugs (20 in all), discover how ants are important in the cycle of a garden, and carrots grow in the ground.As the main play area for the Kindergarten children, the area was transformed from concrete bare walls to a warm inviting place to gather with benches attached with planter boxes added.
To see more of Todd Polich's work from The Earth Foundation, click here