26/05/2021
HAPPY NEWS!! We've received word that we won the Edible Orchard grant from TreeMobile Toronto & Orchard People! 🌳🍎🌱🎉
We are so very thankful that these two organizations support our school community's vision of sustainable food gardens that, with care and stewardship and time, can help nourish our students and our neighbours, while also providing outdoor education, gardening and food justice learning opportunities along the way.
Although so much feels uncertain today, we have the land that connects us. The trees we plant this season will be trees our children can visit years from now, and pluck an apple, remembering some of the beautiful parts of their childhood, learning alongside berry bushes, watching serviceberry petals fall in spring, tasting the fruit in Susanna's Breakfast Bars that they helped grow ...
There is so much to look forward to.
We've had a number of families volunteer to be garden supporters this year (thank you!) and now with the addition of this new learning garden on the way, we would welcome even more hands (and it's easy work - mostly watering). If you could pop by the schoolyard in off-hours as little as once a month over the summer, we would love to have your help. No gardening experience needed! Sign up here and make nice summer memories: https://forms.gle/gCRWMz3jZEb5Jy8F9
💚 SOME WAYS WE MAY SUPPORT OUR SUPPORTERS
🌿 If we have space where we live for a fruit tree or bush or balcony planter or would like to make a donation to TreeMobile Toronto, we can order or gift here: https://www.transitiontreemobile.org/
🌿 If we have fruit trees already or are planting some this year and could use support tending them, Susan Poizner is THE go-to (she literally wrote the book on the subject) and offers coaching and learning resources through Orchard People: https://orchardpeople.com/
🌿 If we have a lawn or garden and would like to support its health this season, Sean of Crooked Farmz is a friend of our school who supported our grant application by offering to assist with compost mentoring. Sean makes microbrews of compost teas and offers a subscription service. (If you're unfamiliar with compost tea, it's a jar of fermented goodness we dilute and add to our gardens to help nurture the soil, improving plant health and resilience to pests while doing something so good for the environment.) https://crookedfarmz.net/
💚 MORE THANK-YOUS
Thank you to parent-volunteers Sonia and Ben who have agreed to be our lead Edible Orchard stewards. And to principal Cathy for green-lighting this plan, and caretaker Andrew in cahoots with Jodi for helping with a strategy for our looooooong hose situation! And thank you to our teachers who said yes to teaching in the gardens, especially the ones who said they don't know anything about teaching gardening yet but will learn.
The plants will teach us all.
share with Roden School Council 🌱
