A garden in Montreal North serves as an organic classroom for 34 students.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL KIDS get a lesson in the most organic way
The 7- and 8-year-olds pulling weeds last week in the burgeoning young garden in the front yard of Gerald McShane Elementary School could readily distinguish them from the vegetables, herbs, flowers and fruit – but still they checked with Elizabeth Pellicone, one of two coordinators of a summer literacy camp program at the Montreal North school: “Miss,” they asked, again and again, “is this a weed?”
They’d spent enough time in the garden – weeding, watering and helping to harvest what was ready – that they knew their way around well enough to proffer a sweet-tasting weed they’d learned was edible. They marvelled out loud at the dif- ferent colours of the stalks of the rainbow Swiss chard leaves, showed how when you rub a leaf of lemon balm, a herb in the mint family, it gives off a lovely lemony fragrance, and hospitably offered fresh chive leaves to chew on.
The organic garden is an outdoor classroom of sorts for the children at Gerald McShane; it’s also an outreach project for partners in the community, but more on that in a minute.
Pellicone, who works as a spiritual community animator with the English Montreal School Board during the school year, has spoken to students at school and at camp about the notion of developing a spiritual partnership with the Earth. “For me, gardening is a spiritual experience,” she said.
The theme of this year’s three-week literacy camp, intended to encourage reading and writing among the 34 Grade 1 to 4 students in attendance, was food and the environment.
(Gardens are also in place in other EMSB schools, including East Hill, Royal Vale, Royal West and St. Monica’s.)
Since last September, Gerald McShane has had the status of a community learning centre – one of more than 20 English-language schools in Quebec so designated. CLCs, an initiative of the provincial government, are partnerships intended to deepen the involvement of schools with the community and vice-versa, explained Evelyne Alfonsi, who was Gerald McShane principal until taking over this month at Gardenview School.
In one of several CLC projects, the Gerald McShane community helped the young mothers at Un Rayon de Soleil, a community organization that provides affordable housing for young, single mothers studying full time, to acquire furniture, clothing and toys. In exchange, the mothers took workshops at the school on topics including cooking and managing personal budgets.
Les Fourchettes de l’Espoir, another community organization in the same building as Un Rayon de Soleil, helps feed families with l ow incomes. With the day camp at Gerald McShane now over, young people at a day camp run by Les Fourchettes de l’Espoir take over this week. Until the end of August, when the garden reverts to Gerald McShane, they’ll be helping to look after it – weeding and watering twice a week and harvesting what is ready to be used in the Fourchettes de l’Espoir kitchen or to feed the children.
For the students, the CLC program “broadens their view of what a community is. … They grow up knowing that they affect things and people around them. It is so global,” Bobbie Variantzas, Gerald McShane’s CLC co-ordinator, observed at the program’s official launch.
And because green initiatives are among the CLC goals, the garden program was “a perfect fit,” she said – a way to create relationships around the work there.
From March onward, she and Pellicone were involved with the Gerald McShane pupils in projects to prepare the garden. They learned about such topics as planting and composting, and about such concepts as mutual responsibility for the Earth and the notion that food does not originate at the supermarket. “Some kids don’t know where their food comes from,” Variantzas said.
Seedlings for cherry tomato plants were started indoors, for instance, and seeds planted for various kinds of squashes. At first, they were placed under grow lights, to be transplanted into the garden once it was warm enough.
As the seedlings grew into small plants, students placed them in pots they fashioned from newspaper, “and then we took the whole pot and planted it,” Pellicone explained to students. “The paper acts as compost for the earth – and we didn’t have to use plastic, which is made from oil, a nonrenewable resource.”
The layout of the garden itself, designed by urban gardener and gardening consult-ant Jonah Neumark, is intended to provide maximum yield. He suggested a permaculture model that involved digging trenches, laying in apple tree branches, flipping the sod that was dug up so it was grass-side down, then mixing compost and earth and covering the mounds with straw. The garden also features a compost bin and two rain barrels. A mural by graffiti artist Salem on the wall behind the garden depicts the elements of earth, fire, wind and water.
At a family dig day in early May, about 70 Gerald McShane staff members, parents and pupils put the garden together – building the beds, planting blueberry and raspberry bushes, a few fruit trees and flowers, and erecting an arbour.
Edible flowers and herbs were chosen for the garden for their beneficial effects on plants or the ability to ward off pests – or both. Borage, for instance, is a good companion plant for tomatoes, squash, strawberries and, indeed, for most plants. It deters harmful worms – and attracts bees and wasps. Among other herbs planted were lemon balm, basil, oregano, mint and thyme.
In early June, the students, grouped by grades and assisted by Variantzas and Pellicone, planted the seeds and seedlings in the garden. They planted cherry tomatoes and ground cherries, for instance, kale and Swiss chard, beets and radishes, cucumbers, carrots and quinoa.
There are also a couple of Three Sisters mounds, named for the Native American planting style in which corn, climbing beans and squash are planted together: the beans add nitrogen to the soil and the corn, which consumes it, supports the vines of the climbing beans; the squash leaves, for their part, keep the ground mulched and moist.
“We are going to sow our seeds,” Variantzas said as Grade 4 students gathered one morning and donned gardening gloves to plant radishes and borage. She encouraged them to scratch the surface gently. “We want a nice mounded surface,” she advised.
“I know what to do because I used to live on a farm,” one child called out.
The arbour is decorated with climbing sweet peas and morning glories, and a grouping of tree stumps provides decoration and seating. It’s a fun place for kids to be. I watched Grade 2 students in the garden the same week – watched t hem dancing around the tree stumps and playing hand-clapping games (Remember “Playmate, come out and play with me …”?) as they prepared to plant kale and Swiss chard.
There were nasturtiums in with the chard and, in the neighbouring mound where they planted the kale, there was bergamot.
The children exclaimed as they came upon insects. “Miss! A ladybug!” “Miss! A centipede!”
Some plants are there because they repel bad bugs and attract good bugs, Pellicone explained. Ladybugs, for instance, “eat the green bugs that eat the leaves of plants.”
“What I like about the project is the digging,” said 8-year-old Gia Colacci. “I sometimes dig with my grandmother, when I cook with her.”
Victoria Malagisi, who will be 8 on Friday, said: “I like that the project has flowers and vegetables.”
Classmate Giulia Pandolfo added: “My favourite part is planting food.”
Five weeks later, the garden was alive with bushes and flowers, plants and leaves and, in day camp, the students who’d planted the kale and Swiss chard were harvesting it and eating it – in the form of a West African stew of Swiss chard and kale. “It was like a cooking show,” Gia said. “We had so much fun. And the stew tasted delicious.” (See recipe on this page.)
They harvested oregano, thyme and chives for the stew in addition to the chard and kale – and another day it was basil, chives and parsley for a succotash made with corn, beans and zucchini.
The radishes and beets should be ready soon, Pellicone said, and the cherry tomatoes have flowered, so there will be cherry tomatoes in August. The beans and peas are flowering now; they, too, will be ready in August. And the cucumbers have started to grow.
The corn and quinoa will be ready for harvest in the fall – and one of the plans for the community learning garden at Gerald McShane then, she said, is a communal meal.