Kale, Chard, and Canada Geese

We had another very productive meeting today at the garden. A dedicated group of gardeners showed up to help us plant some kale (brought in by Ms. Chung) and some Swiss chard (brought in by Danielle) that will grow over the winter. We also got a chance to use our compost, which has been over two years in the making, and it is as healthy as ever. We're keeping the newer kale plants covered for now so they have a chance to grow undisturbed while they adjust to their new home.

Hopefully the newly transplanted kale will grow as abundantly as our existing plants, seen below. Here we are harvesting some kale that was planted last season. Some tips for eating include:

-Boil and serve with oil and vinegar

-Stir-fry and serve with other dishes

-Eat raw

Kale also tends to get sweeter after the first frost.

A bit of a post script here, but at the end of our meeting, we saw huge flocks of migrating Canada geese:

That's it for now. Stay tuned for more!

Work Party Reminder: October 14th 2011

Reminder to all that we are having a work party tomorrow after school (Friday October 14th) to plant some of the beds and prepare the garden for upcoming cold weather. We will meet in the garden at around 3:20 p.m. Hope to see everyone there!

Starting Off the Year

The start of another school year, and we are off to a great start! After everyone settled into the routine at school, we held our first few meetings of the year. We had over 40 newcomers this year, so it looks like we'll have plenty of helping hands!

We had a very productive meeting today, with around 20 people showing up to help out with aerating, staking, and weeding. We'll be preparing the beds for the winter later on this month, filling them with soil and planting seedlings. We're hoping to have some new winter crops within the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

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.