by Nea Maaty
(Nea is a journalist with the FOCUS Media Arts Centre)

In the heart of St. James Town, you will find one of the most multicultural schools in North America, Rose Ave Public School. The school has a student population of over 650 for over 15 years they have integrated community gardening into their curriculum with the help of Green Thumbs.

Green Thumbs started collaborating with Rose Avenue School in 2007 when Sunday Harrison, Executive Director of Green Thumbs, approached the school and asked if they were interested in having their own school garden. According to Sunday Harrison, “It was amazing that the school was open to the idea and right away they got interested in the program”.   They have co-developed the garden spaces with the school ever since.

Sunday tells us how amazing the teaching staff at Rose Ave school are. They are very engaged. “Out of our three schools, they (Rose Avenue) are the most engaged…. And it’s because they know how much the kids in the community need that green space. And how valuable it really is.”

Thorn Rox Hayward, a teacher at the school, explained more about the program using photos of the class and her students. “My class has done a couple of different programs with Green Thumbs over the past gracious years and years. We’ve done a program where the students learned about worms.”

In one of the photos is a kid holding an earthworm egg which has little spherical blobs in it. “Knowing about earthworms and being able to handle them. That was a big step for little students. It’s not something that they would normally do.”

One of the things the kids have done through the gardening project, is learning about the indigenous plants and how to grow them. This was an amazing opportunity not just to know about these plants but also to know about the indigenous culture and how to respect it. This is another kind of engagement and respect that you get when you teach your kids how to take care and learn about the environment around them.

Says Harrison, “Our role as a community partner is to provide opportunities for teachers to bring their students out to the garden and basically the garden becomes the teacher. “When they are able to do that, the students become much more interested in digging in the garden, planting seeds, weeding and growing their own plants.  The students grow plants from seed, or from little sprouts and they get to harvest and eat them.

It is a seasonal activity, “You do what needs to be done at that time of the year, time of day, seasonal activities such as planting, harvesting, composting, whatever needs to be done.” says Harrison.  Green Thumbs is focused on school gardening. But they become school community gardens in the summer when the kids are on vacation. One of the main goals of Community Gardens is to produce food and to relate kids to the soil, plants, their community, and their food needs.

“A school garden can produce a fair amount of food and it’s more about the education, more about the process for kids to learn from where healthy food comes from and it comes from healthy soil.” - Says Harrison. - “They teach the kids how to keep the soil healthy and how to grow food. Kids also have a great opportunity to taste these foods.”

Hayward agrees adding that a school community garden is a multi-layered program that has helped to foster education and inclusion. Kids are engaging and cooperating all while learning to respect each other. They are learning the Three R’s - respect yourself, respect each other, and respect environment. It is an amazing fact that even bullying and injuries were non-existent after the program,” says Hayward.

Green Thumbs have dreams to expand the program to more schools but like any charitable institution, they require funding. Despite their importance, school boards view school gardening programs like the one at Rose Avenue, as an extra-curricular activity. Sunday’s dream is that there would be gardeners hired by the schools the same way the librarian is hired to help kids learn to read.” We would have gardeners help kids how to plant, learning about the soil and earth and planet and good healthy food. “

Let’s hope that one day they will get their wish.