End of Summer Update

Whew, what a summer! Thanks to a bit of wet weather and a collection of incredible volunteers who came to the school on their vacation and watered, the PW Community Garden has had a wonderful summer harvest. We had abundant crops of lettuce, kale, carrots, strawberries and radishes. Our little orchard produced lots of apples, and while most are still too small to eat, I had the privilege of enjoying a delicious gala apple picked right off the tree! As we prepare for yet another year of school, the PW Garden Club is looking forward to another great year of plants and gardening. Our fearless club leaders of last year, Khorshid and Emma, have both moved on into post-secondary education (good luck guys!), and have passed leadership of the club to myself (Danielle) and Jordan. We are looking forward to helping our garden and community grow!

Sign & new beds

After much planning for a long time, we finally got around to the two main projects that we had set goal to achieve in the beginning of this year: making a sign for the garden for people in the neighbourhood to be able to identify it, and building wooden beds for the extra piles of soil.
On Wednesday, May 11, the Garden Committee came to school (on a Professional Day) for about 5 hours and worked in the rain to get these projects done. Danielle Mayo, who has been taking the initiative for building the new beds, led the group in building the beds out of the wood that we got donated to us by Windsor Plywood and also Danielle herself. Danielle has been responsible for the planning and execution of this project and she truly deserves quite a lot of credit. The team that helped her in the building of the beds and installing them in the garden was: Jordan Chiu, Frederic Ho, Nick Sakich, Sheida Naderi-Azad, Camille Roberge, Jack Mills, Jack Hall, Isaac Beckie, Owen Iyer-Grant and Paige Muir.
At the same time, Emma Gosselin, Michelle Chan and I painted the sign for the garden.

(Click on the images for a better look)

A look back at what we've done

I have been doing an internship at an architectural firm for the past week, and in a conversation that my mentor and I were having about LEED, he proposed that I present the sustainability action of our school to the office at a staff meeting. This is the presentation I gave which includes the recent environmental activities done by different student-run organizations/groups at our school. I have included the Environment Club, Community Garden, Plan-It Earth, Student Sustainability Committee and Prime Earth. Ofcourse, I am not highly involved in all of these initiatives so I explained the ones that I have been less involved in while mentioning the names of the people behind those projects.
The community garden is the second initiative mentioned in this presentation, and I have included the timeline of the development of the garden with pictures that weren't posted online before. The audience that I presented this to was very impressed with our progress and some even asked me for more information on school gardens because they knew people who wanted to start one of their own. So it's important to be vocal about what we've done and get the word out. This is how we're going to get everyone involved in the sustainability movement.

I'd like to give a big thank-you to Ms. Susan Chung, Daichi Ishikawa and Hobson Lin for helping me gather some of the information I needed to make this presentation.

Take a look and be proud of how much we have accomplished since May 2009 as a team. Cheers!

Prince of Wales Secondary School Sustainability Movement on Prezi

An visit from an honourable friend

On Wednesday, November 3rd, we had a delightful visit from an old friend of the garden's, Ms. Cornelia Oberlander. Ms. Oberlander is one of the most innovative and environmentally aware landscape architects in North America. Her well-renowned projects including C.K. Choi Building, Vancouver Public Library, Museum of Anthropology, Robson Square Courthouse Complex and VanDusen Botanical Garden, have all brought refreshingly sustainable ideas to their communities. It is truly an honour for us to have the support and collaboration of such a remarkable figure in the development of our own community garden. Ms. Oberlander has supported us since the very beginning of the establishment of the garden; from giving us tips on the design and layout of the beds, to donating the seeds for our very first plants. It was really a pleasure to have her back at the garden to show her how far we have come from the last time she visited.



Today, Thursday, November 18th, Ms. Oberlander presented a lecture on Biodiversity and Landscape Architecture in the Old Auditorium at UBC. Ms. Chung, Emma and I had the honour of attending this lecture, and were very delighted to see our very own Prince of Wales Community Garden featured as one of Ms. Oberlander's sustainable landscape projects. As the Garden Committee, we really appreciated this acknowledgement and would like to take a moment to thank Ms. Cornelia Oberlander for her constant guidance and support. Dear Cornelia, thanks a million for all the encouragement.

October's harvest

I found some photos from committee members harvesting and watering the plants on the day that we planted the trees. Our October harvest included a large amount of beans, carrots, leeks, and delicious, red strawberries. Check out our harvesting day:

p.s. Thanks to Fan Di Gu for providing these photos.

And here are some pictures that I took last week of the strawberries (as you see they are treated specially):



A start to the orchard dream

The 6 apple trees that Emma Gosselin had purchased last spring and Ms. Phillips had taken care of in her garden during the summer, are finally planted in our very own garden.  The first step toward the much-anticipated future orchard was taken on Friday, October 1, when a group of members digged the holes for the apple trees on the west side of the garden (by the fence). The trees were planted the following Thursday (October 7) during the Garden Committee meeting with the help of many committee members and other student volunteers. Unfortunately, my camera died on the spot and I couldn't take pictures of this defining moment for our garden. But stay tuned because I might be able to find some photos of the day through other people who were present.

Also, big thanks to Camille Roberge's mother who gave us two more apple trees from her garden to plant in ours. They are going to be planted tomorrow during the committee meeting. Yay apple trees!

Note: The two trees that Camille donated

Getting back to work

And the moment we had all been waiting for... the school year of 2010-2011 has now started!

This year is the first year that we are going to have the Garden Committee run as an official school club at Prince of Wales. This is naturally very exciting because great work has been done by our wonderful summer members for the past couple of months and now the garden has a strong foundation for further development and expansion. At this stage, there are many projects and ideas that are ready be undertaken for the improvement of the function and layout of the garden and it is up to all you fellow PW students to join us and get involved.

Our first meeting of the school year will be happening on Tuesday, September 21 at lunch in room C110 and everyone who is interested in helping us out at the community garden is strongly encouraged to attend.

If you are a summer member, make sure to show up so we can present the project we've finished together as a team to the new committee members and our sponsor teachers. If you just heard about the Garden Committee and want to know more, please also don't hesitate to come to the meeting. We would be more than happy to have you there and hear your ideas and comments. Everyone is welcome!

Many thanks to summer members: Allie Peloquin, Claire He, Danielle Mayo, Emma Gosselin, Heather Ross, Jordan Chiu, Michelle Chan, Sheida Naderi, Mike Zhai, Paloma Brioschi, Swetha Yatham, Kavya Yatham and Sasha Mills. And I am looking forward to a great year at the garden and meeting all the new Garden Committee members... See you all on the 21st!