ABOVE: Grade 7 student Gina Pereira, left, waters one of the vegetable beds at Osoyoos Elementary School’s garden, while Grade 2 students Faith Paiement, teacher Dean Rowland and Grade 2 students Halle Foster, Alexandrea Brunner and Krysali Colwell watch. Photos by Laurena Weninger - Click on picture for larger image
OSOYOOS TIMES-May 5, 2010
By Laurena Weninger – Osoyoos Times
They may wrinkle up their noses while they stir the compost, but Osoyoos Elementary School’s Green Team members are all smiles when they see the beans are starting to sprout in the garden out back of their school.
“Some of it will be ready by the end of June,” said Dean Rowland, a teacher at the school and leader of the Green Team.
The Green Team is made up of about 30 students, spanning from grades two to seven. They meet at lunch and after school to tend to all the details necessary to keep the project going.
The garden project has been implemented in phases, said Rowland.
Last year, the students started collecting raw ingredients for compost – mostly, scraps from their lunches.
One of the school staff members took the scraps home and used them on her farm, said Rowland.
But this year, they took the project to a new level.
Phase 2 included getting two compost containers and fencing off a section at the back of the school.
Now, the students collect lunch scraps daily and put them in the compost bins.
Phase 2 also included the construction of nine raised garden beds, each almost a metre by two metres.
The wood for the beds was donated and one of the teachers brought in mushroom manure.
Then came Phase 3.
“We planted two weeks ago,” Rowland said, adding the gardens contain beets, carrots, zucchini, beans and some flowers.
Four of the beds were adopted by classrooms, leaving five under the care of the Green Team.
“The vision was to involve as many of the kids as we can,” Rowland said.
They take turns watering, adding to and stirring the compost and weeding sections of the garden area.
“It’s just another way to teach them about the environment. Some of them don’t know anything about composting.”
The garden project fits in very well with another one of the school’s initiatives this year, which is a salad bar smorgasbord project that feeds the children a healthy lunch twice a week.
“It’s quite popular,” Rowland said, adding that the produce harvested by the Green Team will be added to the salad bar lunch.
There’s a long-range plan, too.
“Phase 4 would involve people from the community,” he said, adding that the garden space could maybe be expanded if more volunteers were willing to help.
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