School Gardens Project

School Gardens Project image
Teomi testing the SPEC radishes …
School Gardens Project image
Dirty hands during radish harvest!

[last updated: Jan 21/10] SPEC's School Gardens Project, now in its second year, has engaged school children, teachers, parents, administrators and the community at large in meaningful urban agriculture experiences.

With funding support from the
Vancouver Foundation this pilot project has helped us to work more closely with our local schools, delivering quality programming integrated with the school curriculum.

At SPEC we are very excited about this project because not only are we helping to teach school children about food security and the beauty of growing and harvesting their own organic fruits and veggies, but we are also helping keen teachers incorporate fun and thought provoking agriculture topics into their curriculum. Discussing food issues has proven to be a powerful way to engage children in various science, social studies, math, and health and nutrition topics already written into the BC curriculum. Perhaps more importantly, this project also strengthens students' connections to the environment and offers them important skills for an uncertain future.

At our participating schools last year biodiversity in the food supply, protection of farmland and food processing capacity and organic growing all formed part of the classroom experience. Hands-on gardening, supported by family workshops and take-home gardens literally ‘bring the lesson home.’ Families can attend workshops at SPEC throughout the school year, learning about food security; garden planning, planting and care; food preservation and issues affecting agriculture in our community. Summer programming offered to the students includes family excursions to local growers and processors.

SPEC has, in the fall of 2009, brought Marnie Newell, an environmental educator and trained French Immersion teacher to assist in program delivery. The Bayview and Kits High gardens are ready for the winter and we are currently in the preliminary stages of developing four gardens in the New Year.

Keep an eye on our website for updates on our work.

Please contact Marnie at mnewell@spec.bc.ca or 604 736 7732 for more details.

School visits


Bayview Elementary School Grade 1/2 Classes come to
SPEC for Rooftop Garden Planting

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On April 16 and 17th, 48 grade one and two students from Bayview Elementary School came to the SPEC Rooftop Garden and City Farmer to learn about soil, worms and growing food. These students are involved in the SPEC School Gardens Project and have been having weekly classroom visits by Catriona Gordon, the SPEC School Gardens Project Coordinator, to learn about where our food comes from and how to grow our own food. Students sowed a variety of seeds in small square foot planters and learned about companion planting, sowing, the importance of good drainage, soil amendments and earthworms. The kids loved rolling up their sleeves and delving in to worm castings, manure and the like!

Bayview Elementary School Grade 1/2 Classes Start a
Wormery and a Worm Bin

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On May 5th 2 classes of grade one and two students from Bayview Elementary School got a visit from Catriona Gordon to learn all about worms and composting. They made a wormery, with layers of different soil and sand and observed the important job worms do, in mixing soil, and aerating it with their tunnels. Each student got a worm to observe and learned about how they move with their bristles (setae). You could hear a pin drop when all the students put their ears to their worms to listen for the bristles scratching along their desks! They learned that worms are hermaphrodites (a much repeated word, now in the classroom) and they learned how to tell which end is the head and which is the tail.

The students also made a classroom worm bin, with shredded newspaper and recess and lunch scraps that they had been saving dutifully for a week! They introduced a large handful of red wigglers to the bin, spritzed it carefully with water, and then waited…. After much patient waiting, they now have beautiful dark brown worm castings to add to their school vegetable garden… and they now save their lunch scraps for the pet worms.