An Idea TAKES ROOT
Story appeared in the 2016 issue of QMS Connections Magazine.
BY LEANNE SCHULTZ, OPERATIONS & HR MANAGER
When Grade 3 Teacher Patti Small sent out her annual letter to her new students with a challenge to design a new garden space near the Primary Centre in August 2010, she had no idea of the seeds of change that she had planted at Queen Margaret’s School.
Students arrived for the first day of school with intricate maps of raised beds, mazes, elaborate fountains and twisting paths. The idea of a school garden was not new to QMS. Former Primary teacher Lynn Daniel had worked hard to start a small gar-den for students in another area of the school. But when Ms. Daniel re-tired from the School, interest in the fledgling gardening program waned. To succeed in this new gardening initiative, Patti knew that it would have to be student-led right from the beginning.
In the second week of school in 2010, the Grade 3 students announced their service/leader-ship project for the year would be to create a new Primary Garden. They embarked on field trips to local gardens to gather ideas, and also canvassed the younger students on what they would like to see. They measured the proposed site and created individual landscape design proposals “to scale,” and then worked together to come up with a final design to present to Mr. Stuart Hall, the Junior School Principal at the time, and Mr. Bruce McPherson, the Facilities Manager. With permission to proceed, they organized work parties to clear the site, and a gardening blitz with parents and School staff to create the plant beds. As enthusiastic as the students were, though, it was still difficult to main-tain the excitement for the garden throughout the school year. For the program to really succeed, it had to become integrated into the curriculum.
That’s when David Friend of Growing Young Farmers entered the picture. The Growing Young Farmers Society is a non-profit registered society whose aim is to educate youth about food security, provide youth with hands-on opportunities to learn how to grow healthy food, and set the foundation for sustain-able agriculture. David approached Queen Margaret’s School to see if there was interest in participating in the GYF School Program. Today, the program is thriving with 12 weeks of gardening programming, scheduled into the planting (spring) and harvest (fall) months of the year, integrated into regular school days.
“What is amazing about the gardening program,” notes Junior School Principal Susan Cruikshank, “is how its benefits spread into every aspect of our students’ learning.” Patti Small agrees, “When students garden, they’re learning so much more than growing food and sustainability. Reading a seed chart or dividing a potato for seeding reinforces their reading and math skills; growing food increases self-understanding and self-esteem, and working together in the garden reinforces teamwork and relationships. I’ve also noticed that when our students see the results of their labours, it reinforces their nutrition lessons and makes them more adventurous to try new vegetables at lunchtime in the cafeteria.”
STEM Department Head and Grade 12 Biology/Geography teacher Nicole Lorusso couldn’t agree more. Her personal love of gardening began at a very early age, when she helped her grand-father plant and harvest the tomatoes that he had grown from seeds he had brought with him from his native Italy. But when she brought in the harvest from her own garden, it was the first exposure to fresh garden vegetables and fruit for many of her Senior stu-dents, who came from urbanized cities around the world.
Recognizing an opportunity for a unique program, and inspired by her interest in global food security issues and passion for gardening, Nicole created a Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security course for her Geography 12 class, receiving a Stewards of the Future grant from the Lieutenant Governor of BC in the fall of 2015 for her work.
Taking advantage of the Cowichan Valley’s phenomenal agricultural industry, Nicole led her students on tours of different local farms to study agrarian techniques, including the Ts’uts’siimt Restoration Nursery run by Kenneth Elliott and the Cowichan Tribes. Then, groups of students were assigned one of seven techniques to grow their own food, working closely with Tom Nowlin, a QMS Groundskeeper. Weaving in biology, geography, environmental studies and history, students came away with an enriched understanding and appreciation of just where their food came from and the significance of sustainable agricultural practices and food security around the world.
Head of School Wilma Jamieson observes that more and more teachers are adding gardening to their programming. “With the addition of raised beds behind our TLC building, now the Intermediate students also have an opportunity to continue their gardening from Primary. A natural K-12 sequence of learning has emerged over the years that has, quite literally, enhanced the nature of education at Queen Margaret’s School, and we are all reaping the benefits.”
GARDENING TECHNIQUES
Explored in Geography 12
AQUAPONICS —growing food from kitchen scraps by creating a closed nutrient system using goldfish waste as a nitrogen source to fertilize the growing plants (which in turn, filter the water for the goldfish)
COMPANION PLANTING —permaculture growing techniques to increase food productivity by growing plants that support one another by reducing pests or increasing production
HUGELKULTUR —a gardening technique that increases surface area of growing, nutrient density of soil (through layer construction), and reduces water consumption to meet agricultural demands in areas experiencing drought
POLLINATOR/LOCAL PLANT COMPANION PLANTING —using local pollinator-attracting plants to support threatened pollinator species (like bees) and increase quality of food production without pesticides
SQUARE FOOT GARDENING —dividing a growing area into small square sections to increase productivity in small growing spaces
VERTICAL GARDENING —growing plants up a wall or out of a wall as a solution to limited space and urban food security
WINDOW SILL GARDENING —growing food on windowsills for urban food production, where there are no outdoor spaces to grow