Green fingers at work in Garden City

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This article was published 16/07/2023 (810 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Garden City woman says her new front garden, built by middle schoolers who planted more than two dozen species known for their carbon storage capabilities, is becoming a conversation starter for climate action.

H. C. Avery Middle School’s nature-lovers club completed its first tall grass prairie revitalization garden at the end of the 2022-23 school year.

Teacher Scott Durling, who runs the extracurricular group, sought out to find a neighbour who would be willing to let his students both learn how-to garden and take care of their local ecosystem in early 2023.

Erna Andersen, a mother in the Seven Oaks School Division, immediately offered up a plot.

“I didn’t have to think about that at all,” she recalled of her prompt response to Durling’s wintertime request on their neighbourhood Facebook page.

Andersen lives with her partner and two young children in a residence located less than a 10-minute walk from the school located at 10 Marigold Bay. The avid gardener said she welcomed the opportunity to have students design a 200-square-foot garden and grow grasses that populated the area long before her family did.

“This project serves a bigger purpose. There’s beautification, but it’s also to actually enable the revival (of native species), bringing things back,” she said.

Since the students added the final touches to the plot last month, there has been no shortage of passersby wandering over to analyze it and ask questions. Durling installed a sign.

During the tail-end of the school year, once all the snow had melted, students made several field trips to Andersen’s yard to conduct measurements, take pictures and consult with her about her preferences — from her favourite colours to shapes — for the project.

Andersen gave them free rein, although she requested as many tall grass prairie species as possible be included.

The climate action club members dug up green grass, which is the most popular front-yard decor in the residential community, to plant black-eyed susans and other species that have deep roots and are both flood and drought resistant.

They grew their seedlings out of a greenhouse in the Aki Centre, Seven Oaks’ land-based learning facility just north of the Perimeter Highway.

Learning for a Sustainable Future, a national charity that supports sustainability education in classrooms across the country, provided funding for the initiative. Andersen provided mulch, soil and water.

The goal is to create “tall grass prairie corridors,” said Durling, who is a coordinator with Green Minds, a group of teachers and researchers interested in delivering climate change education in a way that promotes well-being and action.

“Before Garden City became Garden City, it was likely a tall grass prairie ecosystem and overtime, that’s slowly gone away,” he said. “The intention is to help the insects and various other species that are still present be able to jump from garden to garden and plant to plant to plant.”

The middle years teacher recently launched a climate action curriculum to promote outdoor education and equip colleagues with ideas on how to overcome their personal anxieties about the changing planet in order to do so.

Durling said he is always keen to engage youth in small action projects that can equip them with skills and ideas to use and undertake outside of school hours.

“I hope that the students in this project feel more equipped to act for the benefit of the climate, as much as I feel better equipped to act,” Andersen said.

The homeowner added her immediate neighbours are now keen to turn their yards into satellite classrooms for H.C. Avery.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie