Vincent Van Gogh said, “great things are done by a series of small things brought together” which is exactly what former principal Kathy McTaggart and the teaching team at Ponoka Secondary Campus proved to be true when the time came to spruce up the landscaping at their central Alberta junior & senior high school. Rather than replacing their overgrown fir trees and dead shrubbery with more fir trees and more ornamental shrubs, they decided to liven things up with some fruit barring replacements.
“We just really recognized a need for food in the community, and we wanted the children at our school to know where their food comes from and that they can grow their own healthy food,” McTaggart says. Before the planting could begin, there was a good deal of coordination that needed to happen between the school and the Wolf Creek school division. Once that was done, it was out with the old and in with the healthy edibles!
The first plants to take root were a collection of Saskatoon berry bushes. After that, an apple tree and a crab apple tree were added to the school grounds. “We needed to plant things that didn’t need a lot of tending to, because we didn’t necessarily have a designated person to take care of the garden. So, it needed to be self-sustaining.”
Once the fruit-producing garden was established, Kathy and her team were motivated to create a second space that would get the students more involved in the production and use of the food that was being grown. “The thinking was that we could grow products that we could use in our Foods Program, and we could grow things that the kids could just eat,” McTaggart explains.
Potatoes were harvested and used in the Foods class; then rhubarb was planted. “The second year, the Food’s Class used the rhubarb in class and some brave kids, if they had some sugar, would just eat a piece of rhubarb straight from the garden.” The food produced through the edible garden also made it’s way to the school’s breakfast and school snack program.
McTaggart’s advice to any schools who are thinking about swapping their ornamental landscaping for an edible garden is to “do it!” She adds that when planning out your outdoor garden you need to “make sure you are thoughtful in your choice of produce; make sure your choices are sustainable and seasonal.” And thinking of the school year, she offers this last tip “keep the holidays in mind!” After all, Alberta’s summers are great for growing, but are also the time for school breaks.
