Dirt under fingernails is not the only thing teachers hope will stick with their students after spending some time working in their school garden.
Hands-on learning in gardens has become increasingly popular as education has moved toward more of a student-based approach.
School food gardens have, for a few Powell River education institutions, provided a staple of springtime teachable moments over past years, but now all schools in the district are seeing the value of having their students experiment with soil.
Students and teachers at James Thomson Elementary School are again busy this spring digging up garden plots, designing how they will be organized and preparing to move vegetables they started inside their classrooms outdoors to the waiting raised beds.
Last year the students had a great time designing the garden and starting plants and seeing what survived over the summer, said school principal Jasmin Marshman.
They planted sweet peas, raspberries and other plants that had to be harvested during the summer when school was not in session, she said.
The gardens have a watering system, but without students to harvest the bounty during the summer the community stepped in to help out, she added.
This year James Thomson students will be more focused in their planting, choosing either spring vegetables with short growth cycles, which would be ready for harvesting before summer vacation, or fall harvest varieties.
“We’re really looking this year at what is quick growing or will grow though the summer and be harvested in the fall, so the kids can really be a part of what they’ve planted and be able to eat it,” she said.
The gardens make it possible for students to see all the steps in the process of growing food and be able to experience eating what they grow, added Marshman.
“We’re teaching them that you can do this easily in a planter at home,” she said. “You don’t have to have a big garden and make it a huge ordeal. You can do this with a small planter on your patio.”
The garden at the school is protected from deer with a perimeter chain-link fence which gives the area a slight compound feeling, but she said that a neighbouring nursery is helping to change that.
“We can start having the chain-link disappear and eventually have it covered in grapevines and kiwi,” she said. It would help to develop “a more secret garden feel with more soft edges.”
At Texada Elementary School in Van Anda, the students have been busy since the fall with their indoor plant projects. Over spring break, the school built a deer-proof enclosure that will house its garden which will be created in September.
“It’s amazing,” said principal Rhonda Gordon. “I wish I had that in my backyard.”
They are working on creating a watering system and have been consulting with the school’s “farmer-in-residence” Tom Read for ideas about plants that would fit best, Gordon said.
With few students and staff at the school, the goal is to start small.
“The idea is that we want the kids to be involved as much as possible,” she said, adding that they would then be ready to plant next spring with vegetables that would be ready next fall.
While gardening serves as a crossroads for teaching ecology and nutrition as well as many other disciplines, Gordon said that it is particularly good for empowering youth, fostering team building and teaching social responsibility.
Students today are more screen-focused and not necessarily learning about gardening in the same way previous generations did, she noted.
“We want them to learn about the responsibility of growing your own food and what that entails,” she added.
Students and staff at Powell River’s newest school Westview Elementary are working to not only grow food, but also establish a native plant garden to enhance the landscaping.
“From the planning to the making, we’re trying to do this with the children being involved right from the start,” said kindergarten teacher Brenda Butula.
Older students will work with younger ones in a buddy system, she said. Grade seven students will learn how to build raised beds and a compost area.
A lot of salal has already been planted on site, but the plan is to add more native species along the school’s popular walking path with signs to teach walkers about the plants.
“We really are doing this with a long-term plan of involving the community,” she said. She believes there are a lot of good gardeners who may want to work with the children.
For the past three years students have tended Edgehill Elementary School’s food garden, said teacher Darcy Gesell.
This spring students enthusiastically built a spiral rock herb garden after a parent approached the grade-six teacher with the idea.
Gesell uses the gardens to teach art and examined food among other things.
“A lot of students weren’t aware that they could save their seeds,” she said. She has found gardening to be a good way to start the conversation with students about genetically modified crops, the science of engineering life and issues around their use.
Staff at Kelly Creek Community School have been working with Vanessa Sparrow to develop student gardens. Sparrow previously worked with schools who wanted to develop gardens in her capacity as community developer for Vancouver Coastal Health. She is now coordinator of Powell River Food Security Project.
At Henderson Elementary School, principal Scott Fisher said the school installed two raised beds last year and is preparing them again this spring with compost collected at the school. The beds will be planted with pumpkins and squash.
Students from around the district have been pitching in to work on Haywire Bay Outdoor Learning Centre’s permaculture gardens and landscaping. The centre will celebrate its first anniversary next month.
Centre director Hugh Prichard explained that for some of the “more colourful” youth, the experience of working together on the project has been instrumental in engaging students that otherwise would struggle with regular classes.
“We could have done all this for the students,” said Prichard, “but we would have missed out on a bunch of potential education opportunities.”
Last year, the district hired permaculture design consultant Erin Innes to develop a plan for the centre that includes incorporating native plant and tree species, a “snack track” of edible plants, pollinator and hummingbird gardens, erosion control beds and the ability to develop soil with mulch and natural fertilizers.
Classes from around the district signed up to work on various things, said Prichard.
Students are also at work curating a field guide for plants at the centre, he added. “Really this is just a big, fancy outdoor classroom.”
