Empowering Education through School Gardens: A Comprehensive Workshop ⭐ New Re-Edited Version

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Empowering Education through School Gardens: A Comprehensive Workshop

This School Garden workshop is designed to provide participants with comprehensive knowledge and practical strategies to build and manage educational garden programs. The session is led by Al D’Aoust, a regenerative systems generalist, who emphasizes the importance of using gardens as educational tools that not only enhance student engagement but also foster community building and ecological literacy.

The workshop covers a wide array of topics divided into four main parts, typically condensed from Al’s extensive 12-hour course into a more manageable two and a half hours. It includes interactive segments, Q&A sessions, and even an earthing break to ensure participants stay refreshed.

Key areas of the workshop include:

1. Foundation of Educational Gardens
2. Workshop Design and Facilitation
3. Community and Volunteer Involvement
4. Building the Garden

Throughout the workshop, Al emphasizes that the ultimate goal is to foster a lifelong love for nature and sustainable practices among students, thereby creating a ripple effect of ecological stewardship in future generations. The session concludes with a powerful call to action, urging participants to take the lessons learned and create thriving educational gardens that benefit both the environment and their communities.

00:00 Introduction and Workshop Overview
00:31 Agenda and Technical Details
02:37 Introduction to Al Daou and Educational Garden Programs
03:35 Principles of Educational Garden Programs
15:49 Benefits of Garden-Based Learning
45:12 Linking Gardens to Curriculum
53:07 Understanding Wicking Beds
55:09 Engaging Kids in Gardening
57:27 Navigating Public Policy for Gardens
59:13 Debunking the Green Thumb Myth
01:00:54 Seasonal Workshop Delivery and Facilitation Techniques
01:06:28 Experiential Learning in the Garden
01:07:37 Inquiry-Based Learning and Cooperative Learning
01:12:01 Reflective Practice and Making Gardening Fun
01:16:01 Seasonal Workshops Overview
01:19:23 Bonus Resources and Garden Planning
01:22:20 Q&A: Crop Rotation and Soil Amendments
01:31:59 Building a Strong Community Around Your Garden Program
01:45:10 Exploring Intangible Aspects of Gardening
01:45:48 Experiential Capital in Gardening Programs
01:46:33 Intellectual and Cultural Capital
01:48:23 Addressing Summer Break Challenges
01:50:04 Managing Volunteers Effectively
02:05:03 Building and Maintaining the Garden
02:16:12 Adapting Garden Programs for Various Contexts
02:22:11 Inspiring the Next Generation of Land Stewards

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#SchoolGardens #EducationalGardening #GardenBasedLearning #SustainabilityEducation #OutdoorClassroom #EnvironmentalEducation

All right, so we’re ready to get started. Welcome everyone to our
School Garden workshop. We’re thrilled to have you here tonight. Before we dive in with Al D’Aoust,
just a quick heads up that if you have any technical issues today or
questions throughout the evening, please go ahead and send me a direct
chat message using the Zoom chat. I’m Matt Leger and I’ll be your
technical producer for tonight. And also, uh, grab a notepad because
Al has some incredible insights that you’ll want to capture. Alright, so let’s get going here. So here’s what we have planned
for the next two and a half hours. Al’s gonna take us through, uh,
four comprehensive sections. These are actually full scale
modules that normally would be, I think 12 hours of content he said. And this is on building
educational garden programs. We have lots of q and a sessions
here for you built throughout the session as you can see. And, um, we’re also gonna take an
earthing break because we both feel that this is extremely important
for people to step away from the computer and stretch their legs a bit. And if you can, you know, get
your bare feet on the ground, that’ll be around 7:10 PM Eastern. And give us a chance to recharge before
we finish the next, uh, leg of our event. Notice that, uh, those q and
a sessions, that’s really where the real magic happens. So come prepared with your
school garden questions. And then in addition to our agenda,
please also note that we’ll be providing a copy of the recording link today for
anyone who couldn’t attend or anybody that wants to review the content. We’re also gonna provide a copy of the
presentation slides and your complete educational garden program toolkit. So stay tuned for that. And if you could please allow up
to 24 hours after the event to receive, uh, the follow-up email
for that, that would be fantastic. So let’s quickly cover the tech basics
because I know everybody wants to focus on the main presentation and I do as well. So everyone today is muted here just
to keep the background noise down, but we absolutely want to hear from you. So feel free to ask your questions. Just click the chat button and
send your messages directly to me. Matt je don’t hold back. Al’s a regenerative systems expert and
this is your chance to tap into the knowledge that he’s bringing today. So we’ll have, uh, q and A breaks,
as I said, after each section. Plus we’ll have a bigger discussion
at the end where you’ll be able to answer all of your questions. And again, if you have any technical
issues or questions throughout today’s presentation, please direct those
directly to me as your producer. I’ll be standing by to
field those questions. And now folks, without further delay. Our feature presentation the
moment you’ve all been waiting for. So join me in welcoming my good
friend and business partner, Mr. Al D’Aoust, uh, who will now share
his incredible educational school garden presentation with you. And the screen is yours, brother. It is indeed incredible. But I do have to correct you, Matt. I’m no expert. I’m, um, a mere generalist,
uh, forever student, you know? Fair enough, fair enough. Never an expert. Thanks for the correction. Alright, uh, so welcome folks. Thanks a lot for joining. This is an intimate session and on
purpose because I wanted to make sure that we could answer questions, but also
I wanted to make sure that the quality of our audience was really, uh, was
really good because the intention here. Is to arm people with the power to inspire
and educate youth using the garden, right? The garden as a learning tool. Um, there’s a lot of content
out there on gardening, right? Growing food, um, you know, how to
compost, how to grow vegetables, how to build your garden. This isn’t that. This, uh, two and a half hour seminar,
we’ll call it workshop, is all about sort of speed running from zero to
one, an educational garden program. And I’m gonna talk about exactly what I
mean by an educational garden program. I’m gonna go through some of
the principles that make up an educational garden program and
distinguish them from other things. I’m gonna go through how to build
your garden program, how to facilitate workshops for youth, using the garden
as a learning tool, and then I’m gonna talk about what you do during the summer. If you’re a teacher, for example,
I’m gonna talk about how you go about managing and coordinating
the entire program as a whole. And so if you’re a teacher, if you’re
a parent, if you’re a homeschooling parent like I am, I’m a father of
three children, if you are a youth worker or anybody who influences
youth or somebody who’s just really motivated to do so in their community. You’re gonna get a ton out
of this, and I do mean a ton. Um, there’s a lot of information. There’s, it’s, there’s a, as Matt
alluded to, this was previously a 12 hour course that I’ve tried my best
to condense to two and a half hours. So, uh, I suspect there’s
gonna be some questions. I suspect there’s gonna be some follow
up, and I suspect that there’s enough interest that there may even be a
part two where we can expand further. But for now, what I wanted to do is
give a crash course to educators as we approach, it’s currently August
21st as we approach the school year, whatever that means for you. Um, this is a great time to
start thinking about the garden. And it’s counterintuitive, you
know, because most people will start talking about the garden in
spring, you know, um, and we’re the fall, so, or late summer rather. So why are we talking about a garden now? And the reason we’re talking about
it now is, first of all, for anybody, fall is the best time to start planting
a garden because you can get a lot prepared, um, for the following, for
the growing year, for the growing season that follows in winter, if you’re
in the northern hemisphere, right? But also because the school is
starting, everybody’s getting into that learning atmosphere. There’s a vibration in the air, right? For better or worse, going back to school. So, uh, now is a great time
to start thinking about how am I going to revolutionize my
educational year with the garden? How am I gonna integrate the garden
into my, uh, into my curriculum, into my delivery, into my children’s, or the youth
that I work with experience this year? And that’s what this
entire workshop is about. So I’m gonna cover a lot of stuff. I’m gonna go ahead and get started here. Okay, so I’m calling this workshop, uh,
building an Educational Garden program. And as Matt alluded
to, it’s in four parts. And part one, we’re gonna talk
about the garden as a learning tool. Uh, and then we’re gonna go
through and we’ll, we’ll talk about the other parts as we move on. We’re gonna go through all of those
things that I talked about earlier. So we’re gonna do one part at a time. I’m gonna try to keep each
one within 30 minutes or so. Now I have a hard time following rules,
so we’re gonna see if that works. Uh, and we’re gonna pause after every
30 minutes to, for a bio break, for any quick questions that are relevant
to the content that we just covered. Uh, and don’t worry towards the
end, we’re gonna have plenty of time to ask general questions. You can ask me anything, uh, as it
pertains to gardening or as it pertains to building an educational garden program. Um, I’ll speak as best as I
can to my experience, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll be
honest with you about that too. Um, so before we get started, I
should probably introduce myself a little bit as mad, uh, mentioned. My name is Alou, that’s Orlando. So yes, I’m French, uh, French Ontario. So if you’re from France, you, you
may disagree with me regardless. Uh, my name is Al D’Aoust and I
am, um, we’ll say a generalist, but I’m mean Ecological Generalist. I’m an entrepreneur. Uh, I’m Matt’s business partner
and we focus a lot on education, but throughout my career, my focus
has been on regenerative education. So what does that mean? It means, um, that I’ve spent the
last 15 years being incredibly passionate about food production and
ecology and the intersection of the two as long as well as human health. Right now I’m a father of three
children, so a lot of what drives me is my children and youth. And so I actually spent my entire
career, my twenties and most of my thirties working with youth
in an educational setting, both youth, adults, families, et cetera. So, um, within the nonprofit sector,
I’ve built over a dozen school garden programs in public schools. I’ve also built school, uh, educational
garden programs in, uh, youth centers, like the Boys and Girls Club, uh,
after school programs, community garden programs, high schools, market
gardens, um, gosh, and public places, um, in front of a fire station, uh,
downtown, um, all over the place. So I’ve dedicated my life to
spreading this, this freedom, this sovereignty of being able to grow
food, of being able to nourish ourselves, of being able to interact. With the ecology around us. And I focus on inspiring youth because
I believe that if youth grow up in connection to nature, if youth grow
up knowing what it’s like to, uh, grow and taste truly nutritious,
beautiful earth given food, um, as their birthright, then uh, I just think
we’ll have a better world, frankly. And so if you agree with me, stick
around because this workshop is all about some practical, pragmatic
steps that we can take to truly making that happen wherever we are. Whether it’s in our backyards, where we’re
teaching our children and inspiring our children, and inviting the neighborhood
kids and growing food all at the same time, whether it’s in a public school,
a community garden, whether even if all we have is a small balcony or a
kitchen window sill to grow a few herbs. All of the principles that I’m gonna
be showing you today totally apply. And I hope my hope for you by the
end of this is that not only are you inspired to start an educational
garden program, um, but that you can actually put that into action. And in a few months from now, you’ll
be sharing photos with me of smiling children, planting seeds in the ground, or
starting a compost pile or whatever it is. Uh, so that’s my biggest hope and
it’s why I’m putting on this program. So this is me, uh, little baby
me about, gosh, I don’t know, 13, 14 years ago, maybe 15. Um, this is actually in a community garden
plot, uh, where I was running, and again, we had many stakeholders, many partners. So, um, I don’t take all of the credit
for these programs that I put together. There was a lot of wonderful
minds and beautiful people that were behind all of this with me. Um, but I was the facilitator. I was kind of the front point. I was the one who really
showed up for these kids. And so I built this deep relationship
with a lot of families who really just wanted to engage their children. Now are these, this particular program,
and this was in a social housing development, so we were working with, um,
you know, low income families, families who didn’t have access to land otherwise. Um, and in partnership with the housing
co-op, with the municipality and a couple other nonprofit organizations, we were
able to install gardens, teach people, teach families how to grow food, and
we taught them through their children. So you can imagine, you know, I’m
teaching a group of children and you see there’s a parent standing
behind me, and you can imagine behind the camera there’s a few more. Now they feel amazing because they’re
bringing their children to an event where they’re going to be nourished, they’re
gonna be taught something, they get to participate, they get to be outside. So it’s kind of a no brainer, right? But the parents learn so much too, right? Because we can explain things
so that everybody understands. It’s very accessible knowledge
and it’s very tactile. And so the parents get involved as
well, and it becomes this really beautiful family learning experience. And every time I came back, there was
something new going on, or somebody would run out and look, look at the kimchi that
I made, or, you know, whatever it is. And I, there’s so many beautiful,
uh, meals shared with me, and it really was wonderful. So, um, again, that’s what inspires me to,
to share this information with others now. So I want you to imagine as we’re
getting started here, a garden that really maximizes learning for students. I’m not talking about
maximizing food production. I’m not, you know, measuring yield
by the number, the, the pound, uh, of tomatoes that you pull out of there,
the number of heads of lettuce, but I mean, a garden that truly maximizes
learning as a priority, right? And I want you to think to
yourself, and, and you can post that in the chat if you’d like. What essential elements do you
think it should have, right? So before we even start, I want you
to visualize this thing that we’re talking about, this educational
garden program, a school garden. What does that mean? What do you, what do you think
that it should have that would distinguish it from any other garden? We can go ahead and we can
post some of those in the chat. And, um. We’ll take a look at that after. So, our learning objectives
and these learning objectives are for this, um, this section. So there’s four sections. So our learning objectives for this
first half hour we’ll say, is to first understand the role and the benefits
of gardens in educational settings. So I’m gonna talk about what
makes an educational garden program unique or distinct. We’re gonna talk about the unique
principles that differentiate it, which I just alluded to. And then we’re gonna explore how
gardens can actually integrate with and enhance various curriculum subjects. So this is the, this is the powerful
bit because if you’re a teacher, right? And lemme know in the chat if you are,
but if you’re, if you’re a, a, a primary school teacher, let’s say the garden
actually offers you a tool through which you can teach the curriculum
items that you are gonna teach anyway. Now, this is incredibly powerful
because a lot of teachers, a lot of school faculty will look at the
garden and think, you know what? I’m already overworked and underpaid. I’ve already got a lot on my plate. I’m already taking
homework home to grade it. I’m already staying up until 10:00 PM
I’m already showing up at work at 5:00 AM and I don’t feel like I get a break. I don’t need a garden to care for too. And I empathize with that deeply, right? But what I’m here to tell you is that
the garden is gonna make your life easier because children want to be outside. Children want to be engaged with the soil. Children want to be learning
new things in nature. In partnership with nature, even
if they can’t express that verbally yet, there’s this deep pull, right,
this intuitive pull towards nature. And the beautiful piece is that you
can use the garden as a tool to teach all sorts of curriculum subjects. So throughout this program, I’m gonna be
teaching you some specific links to the curriculum, keeping it relatively broad. I did most of my work in Ontario, Canada. However, I want this to apply
to you wherever you are. And so, um, I’m gonna link it to some
general curriculum connections, and I’m gonna tie the garden to various
curriculum connections to get you to start thinking about, um, how you
can leverage the curriculum instead of perhaps, you know, sit down
paperwork or, or a lecture, right? How you can leverage the garden to teach
the same thing and bring children outside to get breathing room to get grounded. And then as a result, they’re
calmer, they’re more centered for when they come back in class, right? If that is your context or
the kitchen table, if you’re a homeschooler or anything in between. So it. It’s obvious to some folks, but I
wanna, I want to talk about where an educational garden makes sense because
most people think of school gardens and they think of just traditional schools. Uh, and I know a few people that I’ve
taught, many people that I’ve taught, um, have been, uh, school teachers, right? And I’ve often worked with school
teachers, but there’s a lot of other context where it makes sense. And towards the end, I’m actually gonna
go into how to adapt your educational garden program to other contexts. So most of what I’m gonna talk
about today pertains to the school setting or some sort of school,
traditional school setting. But if you’re an unschooler, I am right. I unschool two of my children, uh, one
of my children goes to high school. And, um, if you’re, if you are, um, you
know, in a, in a, in an alternative type of school, if you are, uh, working, if
you wanna work on a community garden program or you participate in a community
garden already, and you wanna start something there, if you run an afterschool
program, a daycare, uh, summer programs, camps, even if you’re thinking I’m
gonna revolutionize this public space in partnership with my municipality, which
I’ve done, um, this will apply to you and an educational garden makes sense in
these settings with the proper planning, of course, which we’ll talk about. So let’s get into the benefits of garden
based learning, and I’m gonna arm you here with some scientific backed, um. Sort of conversational points
that you can use to communicate your program to key stakeholders. And I’ll talk about what that means later. But, you know, whether you’re
pitching this to a group of teachers or a, you know, a parent
council, school faculty, right? If you’re a coordinator, right? If you’re coming in as a parent and
you’re saying, I want my child’s school to have a school garden program, I’m
gonna arm you with what you need to be able to talk to somebody about it, okay? So even if you’re a group of
homeschool parents or a community garden club, or a youth group
organization, or a, a church, right? I’m gonna teach you how to talk about,
um, uh, a school, uh, or an organic educational garden program, and how
to be the champion for that cause. So I’m gonna talk about, you
know, some principles, right? That make up an educational
garden program and the benefits. So what is it, what is it that, and not
the principles rather, but the benefits of an educational garden program. So what does, what does an
educational garden program do? And some of these may seem obvious, right? So the first is, is, um. It enhances engagement. Right? And that seems relatively clear. Um, you know, garden based
learning increases student engagement and motivation. So by interacting with the garden,
of course they’re enhanced, their engagement is enhanced. Of course, they’re, uh,
engaged in tactile learning. Of course, they’re
communicating with each other. Of course, they’re participating
because there’s something cool going on. There’s something different going on. There’s something changing. It’s a very dynamic, every ever
changing environment, right? Nature is always in motion,
and so are children. And so when you pair those together,
now we’re operating on the same wavelength, and those children
are far more engaged as a result. Of course, it improves
academic performance. And I say of course, but maybe it’s
not quite as intuitive as that, right? Students who are actively engaged
in participation in nature often show performance in academic areas. And I say in nature because
it’s not just garden programs. If you have a natural outdoor classroom,
if you’re taking regular hikes with your children, if you are engaged in nature
in some way, then you already know the calming, um, and cognitive effects
of being, of participating in nature. As an adult, you know what it’s
like to take a wonderful hike? I mean, Matt and I have known, uh, I’ve
known this fellow for over 20 years, and the best conversations that we’ve
ever had is taking a hike in the forest. Now, why is that? Right? It’s because of the setting. It’s because of that deep connection
that everybody’s looking for. And the garden is like
a portal into nature. Now, this one seems
obvious as well, right? But a garden active participation
in gardening can enhance physical health, right? Of course, it’s gonna promote
healthy eating habits, right? I’ve, I’ve met very few children who
don’t eat vegetables that they’ve sewn in the soil, cared for, grown, harvested,
prepared, cooked, and put on a plate. I’ve hardly met a child
who won’t eat that. Um, and then of course, being in the
garden, being in motion, engaging in nutritious movement is always healthy, and it enhances social skills. So actually being able to communicate
with each other, to plan together, to participate in something together, and
leveraging the garden as a community space can enhance your social skills
as opposed to, you know, sitting in a classroom again, or sitting
in a circle or, um, there’s a lot of benefit to some of those things. But being in the garden, being in
a free flowing, natural environment is bound to enhance your ability
to socialize with your peers. And then this one kind of
permeates through all of them. Mindfulness and, well,
mental wellbeing, right? The ability to calm yourself. Nature has been proven. Any engagement with nature, uh, fingers
in the soil, barefoot on the soil, on the, on the soil or on the grass. Um, you know, being able to dig through,
being able to manipulate, plant matter, to smell different things, uh, naturally
that’s gonna have, uh, a compounded biodiverse kind of effect, right
on your, on your mental wellbeing. And then it’s gonna cultivate critical
thinking and problem solving, right? So the act of actually building a garden
and treating the garden as an enterprise, as a series of problems to be solved
as a system within systems, right? If you’re a fan of Danella Meadow’s
thinking in systems, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s, um, truly a beautiful experience
to watch children problem solve and hypothesize and test their hypotheses
in creativity and imagination. I view nature as art. I view the garden as an art form. Um, and so as I’m gardening, as I’m
engaging with nature with a farm, um, I really, I truly view that as a sort
of symphony, as a beautiful canvas, and attention and concentration, right? Again, um, it’s just
improving cognitive ability. Being able to participate in the garden,
to put your fingers in there again, will improve your attention and concentration. And you know this again, if you’ve
ever, you know, done some gardening and come inside, or you go and you
take a hike and you come back, uh, for the most part you’re feeling more
focused and then you’re strengthening our connection to nature, right? So, of course, we’re throwing,
strengthening our connection to nature, but, um, it again, seems
intuitive, but in today’s world, we have to be very intentional
about our connection to nature. Being intentional about involving our
youth in a garden program, um, uh, allows them, like I mentioned earlier,
it’s a portal into nature, right? So it allows ’em to actually
participate in the natural processes. That is our garden. Now, I like to take frequent
breaks to stretch and to move. I don’t think anybody should be
sitting in one space for too long. So I do wanna encourage you, even
though we’re just a little bit, a little bit in, I, I’ve only been
talking for about 15 minutes or so. I do wanna encourage you to stop, stretch
your limbs and, um, every once in a while I’ll stop you so you can do this. I wanna, and maybe this is
more for my own benefit. But’s a beautiful thing. Am I doing so far, Matt? Right on time. We got 10 minutes till the next
q and a or to the first one. Now I’m taking this opportunity
to do some stretching myself. Beautiful. Thanks for that. Call out. I don’t know what’s going on
with this fellow’s arms, but sometimes might feel like that too. Yeah. After a workout. Hmm. Uh, we have any questions
coming in yet, Matt? We have a few questions that have come in. Actually, I’m saving ’em for
you, but we have, uh, lots coming in and folks keep ’em coming. Beauties. Alright, so. That was kind of an
overview of the benefits. Right? Now, what I want to do is I
want to get into the principles that distinguish an educational
garden program for anything else. Right now, I come from a
background of, you know, I’ve, I’ve gardened in urban settings. I’ve, uh, I’ve built two homesteads. You know, I’ve milked cows. I’ve wanted to do the ed
food production thing. I still do this. It’s still an incredibly important
and a tremendous feeling to have food sovereignty for yourself. But there are other priorities, and
we, when we’re raising youth, there are priorities that we wanna engage with
as it pertains to education, right? We want our children to learn, but how? Right? We know there are different
forms of learning, right? We can, we can read out of a textbook,
we can watch a video, we can listen to a podcast, and we can touch things. We can be tactile, we can be creative,
we can engage in conversation, we can, et cetera, et cetera now, but, but an
educational garden program, as I spoke to you before, is truly meant to think of the
garden as a tool through which we teach. And so these principles are meant to
set the educational garden somewhat apart, but not necessarily, right? These aren’t all unique to an
educational garden program, but they’re the core, they’re kind of
the core programming of what makes an educational garden program, what it is. So the first principle is that the
Educational Garden program focuses on learning and knowledge growth, right? An educational garden, places learning
first above yield, above even, dare I say, soil health above the varieties
or the beauty of your garden. Above all the educational garden
places learning first, it is the number one desired outcome of an
educational garden program, right? The garden is an
interactive classroom, okay? Prioritizes educational outcomes
over mere plant production. We use every garden element for teaching
your plants, your tools, your soil. All of these are tools through
which you’re going to teach, right? You’re gonna edge, uh, you know,
encourage understanding of subjects like plant biology, like math, through real
world application in the garden, right? The educational garden values the
lessons and the curiosity that sparked as much as the harvest. Okay? So you’re aiming to create lasting
learning experiences beyond the garden, but using the garden as a catalyst. So I might say that more than once
throughout this, but it’s very important to understand that we’re not, the
strategies that I’m gonna give you for designing your garden aren’t necessarily
there to maximize food production. Although that is a wonderful byproduct, but the fact that you’re not getting a
lot of food out of your garden is not indicative of failure in the educational
garden because it is the experience. It’s in fact, it is the failures
themselves that are the desired outcome. We want our children to fail often. To fail fast, right? To fail early. But more importantly, we want
them to learn from their failures. We want them to engage. We want them to hypothesize, we
want them to get it wrong sometimes. We want them to get it right. We want them to talk to each other. We want them to disagree and
learn how to have a discussion around that disagreement. The garden provides a venue for
all of that, and those outcomes are, are the indicators of success
of the educational garden more so than the yield itself, right? Some of the early feedback that
I got was, we didn’t really get much food out of the garden. I don’t know if we’re gonna do it again
next year, but the conversation always resulted in, well, what did you do? Did you have awesome conversations? Did you have fun? Did you get dirt under
your, sorry, excuse me. Bad word. Did you get soil under your fingernails? Gosh, I shouldn’t have cursed there. I apologize. Did you walk around with
your bare feet on the ground? You know, did you learn
a whole bunch of stuff? Well, how do you think. That’s not also gonna be the result
of next year, but amplified, who cares if you grew any food, right? That’s not even the point, because
that will come as a result. We don’t even need to focus on that,
which is why I’m gonna advocate for square foot gardening, okay? So we’re gonna talk more about that later. But the square foot garden
is just as it sounds. It is a rectangular or square
shaped garden divided into individual square feet. And within those square feet,
you grow a set number of plants. I’m gonna give you some amazing resources
that is gonna make this dead easy for you. But the idea here is that, well, of
course you can see the mathematical applications, but also it gives every
student, so if you have a, a, a, you know, a class of 20, we’ll say, it
gives every student the opportunity to claim at the very least one square foot. And gosh, let me tell you, out of all
the classrooms that I’ve worked with, um, there are a lot of students that get very
protective over their one square foot. Their plant tag is very well labeled. It has their name in the back
that is their square foot. And I promise you, they’re analyzing
that plant growth and everything that’s going on within that
square foot with a very keen eye. Now, what could that possibly do for
their ability to read ecosystems? What could that possibly
do for their ecoliteracy? What could that possibly do for their
observation of biodiversity, right? Of their ability to pick out
diseases in pests and plants, or signs of stress or soil moisture. Imagine starting your gardening journey
with just one square foot, how much you could learn from such a small space. I’ll let you sit with that one. So the next principle is the
educational garden is accessible. Now, I, yes, I mean that we should, um,
you know, follow Americans with disability standards, a DA standards, right? We want this to be accessible for, uh,
children and, and adults, of course, in wheelchairs with various mobility, um,
uh, you know, issues or, or, or whatever it is that somebody is experiencing. But what I also mean is we want our
garden to be accessible to a crowd, okay? So if we’re looking to maximize
food production, we’re actually minimizing pathways, right? We’re designing for efficiency of
harvest, but we’re maximizing the amount of square footage we can use to grow. Makes perfect sense. Um, however, looks like Anj is,
is drawing on the screen there? Appreciate it. Um, but however, there’s. In an educational garden program,
what we want is wider pathways. We want more space around the garden
beds so that, you know, the garden becomes kind of the center stage
for, um, uh, for, for time spent in the garden by a crowd, right? So if we have 20 kids, 30 kids, I’ve
had up to 60, 65 children in the garden, which is far too many probably, but
depends on the size of the garden, right? We want children to be able to gather
around the garden so that the person who is facilitating the workshops that
I’m gonna talk to you about today, um, has the ability to kind of sit at the
garden center stage and have people, children gathered around, you know,
some are kneeling, some are standing, but we want it to be accessible to all. Because if a child can’t see or
participate in the garden, then um, their attention is gonna be
elsewhere and you’ve lost them, right? So, uh, instead of maximizing food
production, we wanna maximize attention. And that’s really what I mean. We want everybody, um, to be
able to participate in the garden and that, you know, just for
visualization, it might look something like this, right? So you’re gonna have many
people, many hands, excuse me, participating in the garden at once. One important factor is the
ability to reach, right? So if we’re working with mostly third or
fourth grade classes, um, or, you know, younger, oftentimes we wanna ensure that
they’re gonna be able to reach into the garden without stepping on the garden. Okay? So we don’t wanna compact the soil in
our garden, so we don’t wanna be stepping in the garden because that’s just gonna
make it harder for plants to grow. It makes it harder for the roots to
penetrate the soil and get a foothold. And so by leaving the soil loose and
fluffy, um, it’s, we’re, we’re gonna have a lot, an easier time growing plants, but
as a result, we have to truly distinguish between the path and the garden bit. And so we don’t want to make
the garden beds too wide because then the children aren’t gonna be
able to reach the center of it. You see? Now the next principle is the educational
garden is a reflection of biodiversity. So the educational garden, and
this is true of any garden, this is kind of universally applicable, but
it’s, I think it’s doubly important, um, for an educational garden. Sometimes in order to be efficient, you
have to sacrifice some diversity, right? So there’s a, there’s a bar there. We can, we can be as biodiverse as
possible, but we lose a lot of efficiency of harvest or being able to calculate
our harvest and things like this, right? Um, but biodiversity also
helps us achieve that harvest. So we wanna find that middle ground when
we’re looking to maximize production. But when we’re looking to maximize. Learning, maximize the experience. We want to tip the scale even further
towards biodiversity, because again, the outcome that we’re looking for
isn’t to maximize food production, but to maximize learning opportunities. And we do that by
creating more edge, right? So if you’ve ever, if you’ve
ever cooked a, a brownie, right? What’s the best part of a brownie? It’s always the edge, right? So there’s a genius that I saw, uh, I
wonder if this product still exists, but it was this, this, uh, beautiful,
um, brownie pan that created extra edge. It was just kind of had a
wavy shape on it or something. You can Google it. It’s a maximized edge. And that whoever invented
that was a genius. I absolutely understood
the concept of edge, right? Because what it did is it created
a muffin that just was full, or a brownie that was just full of edge. And because that’s the best part. And the edge is where the magic happens. In nature. If you’ve ever observed the edge of a
forest and a field or the border of a lake, or, um, gosh, even just the edge
between properties sometimes, or a hedgerow or a ditch or, uh, the edge of
a road or the edge of two plants, right? The between two trees. What is it that’s going on there? So, uh, or the edge of a rock
and a piece of soil, right? You can zoom in or zoom
out however you’d like. You know, there’s, there’s so
many examples of edge that exists. So in a garden. The barrier between any two unique
element is can be considered an edge. So if you’re maximizing that edge, in
other words, you’re maximizing the number of plants, you’re maximizing the number
of species that you have there, you’re maximizing the, uh, the vertical height,
the three dimensional size of your garden. Um, when you maximize what’s
going on around your garden, then you are creating edge. And edge invites. Biodiversity and biodiversity
enhances learning. So for example, here we have tomatoes
and marigolds growing next to each other. That edge between those two
plants, just that one edge, right? Nevermind everything else
creates a, a whole flywheel of incredible benefit, right? So the marigolds attract pollinators. The pollinators interact
with the tomatoes next door. Um, if the tomatoes experience any
sort of pest, often the marigolds will attract predators for that. So parasitic wasps that’ll eat
aphids and things like this, right? Um, or ladybugs. So the amount of diversity, the amount
of, uh, needs and yields between each of those two plants is very diverse
and they interact with each other. So again, you’re gonna hear me
mention systems often, and if you need a primer on systems, I
wish I had the book with me now. But a beautiful book is called, uh,
thinking in Systems by Donella Meadow. If you need a primer on systems,
I’d highly recommend it. The idea here is that you have two
complex systems interacting with each other to form one larger system. Right here we have squash, and you’ll
notice, see what’s happening here, right? We have grass underneath the squash
leaves, and the squash is casting a shadow on the ground, right? So you can think about what
that’s gonna do to the soil. Now, that purple flower
is called ground thyme. It’s a beautiful, uh, herbaceous plant. It doesn’t grow too tall, so it forms
a beautiful ground cover, which will outcompete the grass eventually. And now you have squash over there
sitting on the ground, sitting on the thyme rather, and the thyme is keeping
the squash from, uh, from rotting. And you have lettuce to the right
of that, growing in some more compacted soil, as you can see. And then some other plants,
voluminous plants, I can’t really tell in the background. So you have a lot of different
edges there interacting with each other, maximizing biodiversity. And so you can imagine,
right, a 9-year-old, right? My youngest is nine years old. I can imagine him kneeling here
and observing every little nook and cranny in just this little space. And I can imagine how much learning,
how much inspiration is gonna come of that, just this tiny little space. Take a quick sip of water here. So the educational garden
also nurtures inquiry. Okay? So th this goes with biodiversity. This kind of leverages off
of biodiversity, but again. If we’re looking to maximize for food
production, we’re not necessarily looking to maximize, um, inquiry. Like, oh, what’s going? I wonder what’s going on there. You actually wanna wonder, probably less. You want to be certain that
you’re gonna have the food that you’re looking to grow, right? And there’s definitely a place for that. Of course there is. Um, but the educational garden is a space
set aside specifically for encouraging curiosity and inquiry in students, right? You wanna promote active interaction and
exploration within the garden and design activities that challenge and extend
the understanding of a student, right? That has the student asking
questions, novel questions, coming up with interesting answers. If you are, you know, engaging
children in the garden and they ask you a question that makes you go, huh? Or they say something that has you go,
Hmm, you’re doing a good job, keep it up. And that might look
something like this, right? So if you see that look, that
look of inquiry, that look of what is going on here? What is this? Oh, come here, come here,
come check this out. Those are the sounds that you want
to hear in the educational garden. So the next principle is that the
educational garden builds community. Um, now this might feel self-explanatory,
but I think again, in today’s world where segregation is becoming more and
more the norm, we want our spaces to be these holistic gathering spaces. We want our spaces to allow for social
interaction, to allow children, especially youth, to engage in conversation, engage
in disagreement, to engage in debate, you know, to engage in, uh, inspiration,
to collaborate on creativity, to collaborate on problem solving, um, and
community will allow them to do that. But community leads to culture and
having a culture around growing food and interacting with nature. I can’t imagine that
ever being a bad thing. Now, this includes volunteers. And I put this picture in here to
remind me to tell you that I am gonna answer the question at some
point throughout this presentation. But al I’m a school teacher. What do we actually do during the summer
when most of the stuff is growing? I will answer that question, and
this is a hint toward what the answer might be, but there’s more than one. But volunteers, anybody who actively
wants to engage with the garden with you to participate with you, right? This is not a solo game. It’s not one person is running
an educational garden program, and when that person is removed. The entire thing falls apart, right? That is a fragile program. What we wanna do is build a
resilient program, whereas Nassim EB would call anti-fragile, right? When volatility is applied, the
system gets stronger, right? Is what that means. I won’t dig too deep into that, but
in order to build a resilient garden program, we want to and need to build
a community around that program, and in building the community around
that program, we build an educational garden program that is resilient. So that’s exactly what I
mean by resilience, right? We have a community around the
garden program of people who are, uh, stakeholders who are really engaged. We have biodiversity within the garden
that creates ecological resilience. So the e educational garden is meant
to carry on from season to season. It’s not something that you start
in September and end in June, or even next September, right? The idea is for the educational
garden to evolve and adapt within the educational system, whatever that may be. Whether you are at a school where
you have, you know, administrators that change every four years, and
students that are always changing grades or leaving and coming and going. Despite all of that, you wanna make sure
that somebody, that a group of people are championing your, uh, garden program so
that it continues to evolve, and so it becomes a staple of whatever education,
activity, educational activity that you’re engaged with, with your youth. And sometimes that means putting
a fence around it to ensure that nobody is running into it or grabbing
your vegetables or what have you. You wanna protect this, this
sort of sacred space, right? So this is an example of what a
school garden might look like, right? And we’re using marginal spaces here next
to a garden, uh, next to a parking lot. You know this. I see the soil needs to be
mulched, but we’re have, we have a beautifully wild garden here. We have different heights
and it’s accessible, right? Because we see these wide paths,
we see these square boxes that many students can go around. We see many, uh, garden beds
that students can stand around. It doesn’t need to look perfect. It doesn’t need to be a work
of art, although I always view these spaces as works of art,
but it does have to be theirs. And they have to feel some
sense of ownership over it. They have to feel like
they’re protecting it. They have to feel like you
care about their garden. But the educational garden
is also regenerative. Now, for those of you who don’t
know what that mean, regeneration is the opposite of degeneration. We don’t want a degenerative garden
where the soil is getting sicker and more depleted of nutrients year after year. We don’t want something that resembles,
uh, you know, a hundred acre monocrop soy or corn rotation in Ontario, or
wheat or canola, you know, in the prairies, um, or potatoes here on,
on, on beautiful Prince Edward Island. We don’t want our garden to look like that
because that is a degenerative system. That is an extractive system. It is very imperative that our garden. Uh, and in fact, I would say all
of our activities are regenerative. In other words, we are enhancing
state of the ecosystem. Now, that is not just an ecological
act, it is also a personal act When we are behaving regeneratively, when
we are engaging with ecology in a regenerative fashion, when the health
of the land around us is increased, so too is our own personal health. And so as you, and this is another, uh,
uh, very important point towards, um, the garden being resilient, the educational
garden being resilient in order for it to be resilient or, um, one of the reasons
we want it to be resilient perhaps, is because we want to be able to regenerate
the space over time so that the health of the ecosystem increases and thereby the
health of the students that pass through the garden is enhanced accordingly. This might be an example. Now I look like I’m a little suen
there in the background, but, you know, very deep in thought. Uh, I was teaching a workshop with a good
friend of mine, defense of ak, who owns a beautiful orchard in Mirabell Quebec. Uh, and I would say that his work
is one of the best reflections of biodiversity I’ve ever seen in my
life, um, in Canada at the very least. And, um, you know. You’ll, you see here that there are
not only plants, but there’s, there’s vertical layers of different plants. There’s trees, there are smaller
areas, there’s vegetables underneath. There’s a ground cover. There are birdhouses, right? This is a true reflection of biodiversity
that’s just to mimic a natural ecosystem. Now, what I’m gonna be talking to you
about today, it pertains mostly to annual vegetables, but understanding
that your annual garden is part of an entire ecosystem already, right? If there are already trees in your space,
if there’s already things growing, there’s already an ecosystem happening there. So you are plugging into an ecosystem. You are not creating an
isolated patch of soil, dirt. I cursed again, lemme just take
a quick breather here, folks, and I’m gonna encourage you all
to take another little stretch. I’m not talking too fast for you folks. Oh, very good pace. And while we do that and stretch, I
just wanted to emphasize to everyone, like the true value of this webinar,
maybe for those that joined a little later, that, um, you know, you’re really
getting a two hour intensive here from an expert, or no, sorry, another bad word. A sorry. Mm-hmm. Sorry. Not an expert, a generalist, a pro, let’s
say, which is normally a four module course, like 12 hours of expanded content. So suffice it to say that, uh, we’re in
for a real treat today and, and so far it’s been meeting my expectations anyway. Well, thanks Matt. I think it can be a lot. Um, but you’ll have access to the
recording, you’ll have access to all of the resources that I’m gonna give you. So there’s a chance that you leave this
session with more questions and answers. But I hope that as a result of this
session, those questions are answered for you through your experience in
initiating this kind of program. So at the very least, I hope you’re
incredibly motivated and I’ll do my best to arm you with what you, what you need
to be able to accomplish, uh, all of this. On that note, al for questions,
do you wanna take a couple now or we’re behind just a little bit. So, uh, well, let me get ahead a little bit
and then I’ll take a few more questions. I’ve got six more slides and I
think it’ll go fairly quickly. Perfect. Okay. Thanks for your patience, folks. I’ll try to maybe pick
up the pace a little bit. Okay, so let’s talk about how the
garden links to the curriculum. Now, I’m gonna go through
these fairly quickly. For the sake of time, you’re
gonna have access to the slides. You’re gonna have access to, uh, our
full facilitator’s guidebook, which has very detailed curriculum connections. So I’m gonna encourage
you to review all of that. But I just want to give you a
really quick, kind of rundown of how you might link the curriculum,
starting with the most obvious, which is science and biology, right? So what are we talking about? Well, in, in the educational garden,
we’re gonna run plant growth experiments. We’re gonna do a lot of
ecosystem observations. We’re gonna do a lot of
composting science, right? And, and there’s plenty more. So, um, you have to teach
science and biology, right? As your mandate. If you’re a teacher, if you’re a
homeschooler, you probably desire to study science and biology. If you’re an unschooler, then you wanna
encourage your children to be very curious about science and biology. Either way, there’s some
level of science and biology. Now the garden becomes this
beautiful staging ground for teaching science and biology. Naturally. Mathematics, uh, right? I talked about the square foot
gardening layout, but there’s also designing across space and time, right? So there’s the geometry of garden design. There’s volume and area calculations. There’s data analysis, but then there’s
also the design across the planning, across the calendar year, having to
figure out, if I plant this, this seed at this time, when is it gonna be ready? When is my first or my last frost date? Should I start this seed indoors? How many days to maturity, you know,
when do I want to harvest this? And can I count backwards? You know, can I plant something
in the middle of the season? Will I have time? So being able to calculate all of that
and then have all the complexity of having to, um, utilize your space,
but utilize your space across time is gonna give your students, um,
a lot of practical mathematical applications that they can practice. Now, we can get into social
studies and anthropology, right? So we can talk about cultural
plant studies, which is, you know, like the origins and the cultural
meanings of different plants, historical garden techniques. We can talk about how ancient
gardening methods influence various, you know, civilizations
in their way of life, because we’ve always evolved around food, right? Whether we were nomadic and
needing to follow our food, or we were cultivators and we needed
to cultivate that food in place. Either way, our entire
culture is around food, right? No matter where you go in the world. Uh, or you can even put together
a community garden project, right? If you’re, if that’s your setting,
and you can talk about how creating a garden can address local needs
and teach about, you know, current agricultural practices and challenges. Uh, language arts and creativity, right? So we can keep a garden journal, we
can do some storytelling in the garden. We can do art projects. I mean, I’m sure you can think of, you
know, a dozen other applications for arts and creativity or language arts
and creativity in the garden, right? So this is a curriculum
element that you need to teach. Why not leverage the garden as
a piece of inspiration to do so? Something to think about. Physical education and wellbeing feels
pretty intuitive, but I think, again, in today’s sedentary world, it’s
important to give ourselves excuses and be intentional about engaging in
nutritious movement, moving our body, engaging with our bodies as much as
possible in a, a lot of diverse ways. And the garden gives us
the capacity to do that. We can reach, we can stretch, we can
crouch, we can crawl, we can lay, we can sit, we can stand, we can bend, right? We can lift, we can carry, there’s all
sorts of opportunities for physical education and wellbeing just by
participating in the garden, right? So maybe instead of taking the kids to
the gym for one day, you take them out to the garden and you do garden yoga, right? Or you do some nutritional education, um,
with your harvest, or you literally just treat gardening as an exercise and you’re
just intentional about the movements and er ergonomics of the gardening itself. Environmental education again, uh, feels
like a no brainer, but this gives you the o the opportunity to not just study
the garden itself, but the garden as an ecosystem, and then the garden as
an element within a larger ecosystem. And then that larger
ecosystem beyond that. We can talk about climate, we can talk
about slope, we can talk about watersheds, we can talk about the water cycle, right? There’s so many opportunities
to talk about weather, climate, geography, um, and any other piece
within environmental education. And just tying it to the garden. How does this affect the garden? How does the garden interact with this? Right? And we can build out
regenerative projects, right? Build out ecosystem lessons,
recycling in the garden, right? All of these elements are things that
exist already on your curriculum. If you are, uh, um, either a, a
traditional homeschooler with a curriculum or, uh, you know, a primary
or secondary school teacher, all of these are check marks for you. And that is my last slide for this part. So I’m just gonna stop,
uh, sharing my screen now. And I’m gonna give, uh, folks the
opportunity to answer some questions and uh, well I’ll do the answering
I guess, but I’ll give other people the opportunity to ask questions. Hey, if anybody wants to jump in and answer
some questions too, we’d welcome that. Let’s have some discussion here. Oh, I noticed the light behind me is a little bit. Hey Louis, but that’s okay. You’re good, I think. Oh, you have a nice aura. Yeah. So, yeah, we have lots of questions here
and thanks for submitting those, everyone. Um, they’re kind of all over
the place, but I guess we can just get ’em out of the way. You don’t have to answer them
all, but, um, let’s just see how many we can get through here. So first of all, will the
recording be provided later? Yes. The recording, the slides, everything. A couple people asked that
we’re gonna provide all of that as well as your toolkit. Do you wanna touch on the
toolkit at all, Al a bit. The toolkit’s gonna be a folder. You’re gonna have a couple
of PDFs, probably a few PDFs. There’s gonna be my
facilitator’s guidebook. There’s gonna be, um, a few sub
folders of pdf of workshop sheets that are principal that you can
take and use as a lesson plan, um, across all 12 months of the year. And you’re gonna have a whole
bunch of other downloadable and printable resources included in that. So it’s gonna come in one really
nice folder package for you. Perfect. Let’s see here. Um, this person says, so cool. I’ve heard of forest schools,
but never a garden school. Are they similar? Well, yeah. So maybe I should reiterate. The, it would be amazing if there
was such a thing as a garden school. Perhaps there is. And if there is, please share it with me. Uh, but what I meant to say
is school garden, right? So if I said garden school, forest
schools are beautiful, right? They’re beautiful settings. They’re encouraging people to get in
nature, children to get in nature, but, uh, a school garden, right,
is a tool that fits in any context for a school being one of them. Montessori schools being another
daycares, et cetera, et cetera. So, uh, however, garden school,
maybe you’ll be the first. Mm-hmm. It’s a good idea. I mean, it works either way. Um, can I please get a copy of the slides? Yes. We’ve already answered that. How, how do I grow a
diverse garden in the city? That’s a good one. That’s a really good question. And that can be challenging,
but it can also be a bonus. And so what you have to do is leverage the
fact that you’re in an urban environment. How do you increase biodiversity? Well, look at your city and
think about how much edge exists. Now, I started my work in an urban
environment and I’ve created, I, I’m thinking back to one, uh, school
garden program that I worked on, which was literally built on top of
asphalt, uh, because there was no other space, there was no green space. They had a playground area. We didn’t wanna put it in there
because it would get trampled on because it wasn’t very big. This was an inner city school. And, but what we did have
is an excess of concrete. So what we did is we built four foot
tall raised beds with, um, uh, uh, you know, like a, a tarp underneath. So it became a contained ecosystem, and
we built them as get this as wicking beds. Now, what is a, this is a whole thing
that I could teach about, so I’m gonna try and you’re gonna have to
Google it to get an image, but I’m going to, uh, try to describe it. So a wicking bed is where you put rocks. So you start, you put a
layer of large stones. Uh, before you do that, you take like
a PVC pipe with an elbow, and you run that underneath and you perforate that
elbow, and then you put rocks all over it. And then you put a layer of something
like burlap, some layer that’s gonna keep soil and the rock separate, but
still allow for water to permeate. And then you fill that with your soil. This creates a contained ecosystem. Now, ideally, you want your garden
to be connected to the earth, right? But if you can’t, you can’t. You, you make, do you use containers? This is one really cool container
that allows you to then water. So you put your water in the
pipe, the water runs directly underneath and fills the reservoir. That is the rocks and
through capillary action. Now, this is a great lesson for your
students through capillary action, which is the act of wicking, right? So, um, for those of you
who aren’t certain, if you water, the tissue gets wet
right the whole way through. That’s capillary action. So that will happen. Soil will wick moisture up from the
base and will irrigate the plants from underneath, which can conserves water. And you want to do that
because you are on concrete. And so you have something
called the heat island effect. The heat island effect, uh,
in urban environments is real. It usually rages the temperature in the
area by at least a couple of different. Heat, there’s thermal mass holding the
heat from the sun and then releasing it. Right Now, there’s a benefit to that in
that usually in an urban environment, you can start your gardening season earlier
and it’s extended further on the end. So you actually have a longer
growing season, if not more space. What you also have is a lot of vertical
space walls, right, edges, fences. These spaces allow you to maximize
the vertical height of your garden so you can maximize diversity by
cultivating vertical layers, not just horizontal layers in the garden. Good answer, very thorough. Um, how can I, this is, this is a question
that kind of hits home for me, so I’m curious to hear your answer on this one. How can I foster excitement in my kids,
uh, to do these things with me at home in an age where digital toys and devices
are so much more attractive to them? I’m gonna flip that question around. Um, so Matt, I’ll use you
as a Guinea pig for this. You, you, you’ve always sort of
worked out, you’ve been on top of your exercise, but recently you’ve
really been on top of it, right? Matt? Y Sure. Yeah. Yeah. For, for the most part. So let’s just say you’ve, you, you,
you’ve started recently, you’ve started being very consistent with
your, with your exercise routine. Now maybe this applies to anybody else,
but when you first got started, Matt, when you first said, you know what, now’s
the time, I’m gonna stop doing this for a few days and stopping, or I’m gonna stop
telling myself one day I’m gonna do this. When you first started, was it a
comfortable experience for you? Definitely not. No, it wasn’t. But you did it anyway. You showed up. And how does it feel
now when you work out? I couldn’t imagine not working out. Let’s just put it that way. So let’s apply that same thought
pattern to the garden for a moment. My children won’t put down their iPads. I look, I get it still to this day. I understand. Okay, there’s this pull, this push
and pull with technology, right? However. There’s an empowering sensation that
comes with consistent interaction with the ecology around you as I’ve spoken to you. And even if it’s just 30 minutes
a day, if you’re consistent about it, I promise you, you’re gonna
cultivate a love for gardening. It does have to be consistent. And if that’s too difficult for now, then
the best thing that you can do is model that behavior and be out in the garden. Oh, you know, you want your password,
uh, to get more screen time on your iPad? Well, you’re gonna have to
come outside in the garden. ’cause mom’s pulling weeds. Hey, while you’re here,
can you just yank on this? Oh, this is edible. Check this out. Hmm. Tastes like lemon. Here’s some wood sol, you know? Oh, oh, it does taste like lemon. Yeah. And then all of a sudden an hour goes
by and this kid’s, you know, eating a turnip, it happens quickly, is my point. Yeah. I love that. The modeling too is That’s true. So true. Like, it’s so important. And, and the little snacks, right. That are like the reward along the way. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Uh, here’s another good one. They’re all good, but I mean, is
there a way to get around public policy to protect the land? I think you had touched on that at one
point, uh, in your presentation, like how they, they say, how do I stop the township
from spraying pesticides near my house? Oh, you become the raging. No, uh, well put up a sign, right? If they’re gonna be spraying pesticides. I mean, that, that seems like
a general garden question. If I, if, if, if you’re running a garden
program, you’re like, well, yeah, but, you know, the city sprays pesticides
along the median or something, then it, it is just a matter of communication. I mean, nobody wants to ruin a good thing. This person spraying this thing is doing
so out of, out of ignorance or out of some sort of obligation, put a sign up,
uh, ask nicely, lead with kindness and compassion and, um, not anger, right? And in doing so, um, you’ll
cultivate understanding and perhaps community as a result. Now, here’s another thing that I’ll say
is if there’s this sort of patch of lawn that just keeps getting sprayed with
pesticides, that might be an opportunity for you to plant some sort of like
perennial or native ecosystem there that doesn’t require much maintenance at all. And as a result, certainly won’t be
sprayed for, for quote unquote weeds. Right? So there may be some education involved,
and this is beyond the scope of this, um, seminar, but we could talk a lot
about how I initiated a lot of public area plantings, um, in my hometown and
um, in partnership with the municipality. That’s a good point too, in the urban
areas around the schools, I would imagine. Um, okay, we’re gonna hold the rest
of the questions for now ’cause we’re getting on here in time. But maybe just one more because
I know you love this question. Uh, I’m good at teaching, but
I don’t have a green thumb. Even my house plants always die. LOL. Okay, there’s no such thing as a green thumb. I want you to get that into your mind. A green, a lack of a green thumb is
just a thumb, uh, that lacks practice. Okay? So there’s no, there’s a myth
out there that people say, well, I have a green thumb. Look, we’re all born with a green thumb. We’re all born with a desire
to participate in nature. We’re all born with a natural instinct
and aptitudes to interact with the natural ecosystems around us. The reason that you feel that you don’t
have a green thumb is because you’re out of practice or you’ve never, you know,
attempted to practice in the first place. So the way that you develop a green
thumb is that you grow things. Now, here’s what I wanna encourage
you to do, and this goes against most advice you’re gonna get. I want to encourage you to be
okay with killing your plants. I want encourage you to fail
because through your failures, you’ll obtain incredibly valuable
feedback that I promise you, your thumb will be so green, they won’t
recognize it against the clover. Nicely said. All right, well that takes
us to either the next part. It’s up to you if you want to keep going
to the next part, or we can take a break. We’re a bit behind still, but
if you wanna keep forging ahead, let’s keep going a little bit. The first two parts are the longest,
so let’s see how far we can get through the second part before we need to
take a break, and I’ll let you take the lead on making that decision now. Sounds good. Okay. Okay. So part two is about seasonal workshop
delivery and facilitation techniques. So now I want to get into the meat
of, well, how do I engage youth? How do I engage my students in the garden? What do I actually do? And what I’m gonna encourage you
to do is to become a facilitator. So if you are a student that wants
to get into this, or if you are a teacher that wants to get into this,
if you’re somebody who maybe doesn’t see themselves as a facilitator. Now, if you’re a teacher, you
definitely are a facilitator and a lot of these techniques will be very
familiar to you, will feel like review to you, and that’s totally fine. Um, but if you’re somebody
who says, you know what? I want to champion this, but I’m not
sure that I can get in front of a group of kids and teach gardening. I don’t even know gardening. Right? I’m not, first of all,
I’m not really a gardener. I’m not even a teacher. I just think this is an amazing
idea and I wanna see it happen. I want to empower you to, um, to, to
view yourself as the champion here. Okay? Even if you feel like you don’t
have a green thumb, even if you feel like you are not a teacher, okay? I’m gonna, I’m gonna, um,
hopefully convince you that you are both of those things. Okay. And you’re, you’re
amazing just as you are. And in doing so, in putting
your best foot forward, in being vulnerable, in, um, engaging the
youth, you can learn alongside them as the facilitator of this program. Okay? So first we’re gonna explore the best
practices for teaching through workshops. I’m gonna teach you five key active
learning techniques that make garden based education engaging and effective. Okay? So these are, um, kind of
larger broad techniques. I’m gonna try and give you as many
examples as I can, but we’re gonna have to, for the sake of time, be
relatively quick, but I’m happy to answer questions about those. Next, we’ll talk about how to
design seasonal workshops that align with natural cycles of the garden. I’m gonna talk about the workshops
that I’m gonna provide you, lesson plans that I’m gonna provide you. Um, and there’s more, there’s lots of
them for you and you can create your own. Um, so you’re gonna have year
round learning opportunities. Yes, even in the dead of winter. And then finally, we’re gonna look at some
examples of actual garden based activities that you can implement with your students,
um, that are both fun and educational. Now, one of the most important
things that I could leave you with this evening is this, which is
the best way to learn is to teach. Okay? So before we dive into the
strategies, I really want to emphasize this powerful concept. I’m gonna say it again. The best way to learn is
to teach, and this sort of. Pyramid. This learning pyramid really
illustrates how different teaching methods impact retention rates. Okay? So this percentage that you
see in the center represents average retention rates, okay? And when you teach something, you
actually engage with the material at a much deeper level, which enhances
your own understanding and retention. So even if you feel like you’re just
starting out, I want you to remember that teaching others, especially
children, can be the best way to solidify your own knowledge, right? So don’t be afraid to dive in and
learn alongside your students. The garden’s actually a perfect
setting for this because it provides endless opportunities for hands-on
learning and discovery, right? So I really want you right now to
just take a breath and reflect on a time when you had to teach someone
something that you were just in the process of learning yourself, right? Maybe you were explaining concepts
from a book that you had just read, or you know, uh, you’re talking to
your peers about a recent insight that changed the way you approach something
in your professional life, right? Think of a time when you learned something
and you taught somebody else about it. Almost straight away. Happens often, right? How many times do you, Hey,
guess what I just learned? Hey, guess what? That is a teaching moment. You are teaching In those moments,
you are educating somebody else about something you just learned. You’re not a, you’re not a
pro, you’re not an expert. You’re not a guru in
any way, shape, or form. You’re a vulnerable learner. You’re somebody who’s not afraid
to admit that they’re constantly learning and actually wants to
maximize their ability to learn by teaching, because the act of teaching
is just learning on steroids, okay? The best way to learn anything
is to teach it to somebody else. And that’s why I do this. So I’m gonna talk into some key
facilitation strategies that are gonna help you deliver effective
garden based workshops, right? Garden based workshops that
actually result in positive behavior change and learning, right? These strategies include, uh,
inquiry-based or experiential learning, inquiry-based learning, place-based
education, collaborative learning, and reflective practice, right? Each one of these approaches offers unique
benefits, and they can be adapted to fit various educational contexts, right? Not just the, the school
or the classroom setting. Now, garden based workshops, implementing
all of these techniques actually lead to, uh, what I would consider maximum
learner engagement and retention, right? So when you ensure that the workshops
and lessons that you deliver are part of your garden program, that are a
part of your garden program, both educate and inspire your students,
uh, you’re on the right track. So we’re gonna explore each
one, um, briefly, right? Not in too much detail, um, but
again, I’m happy to answer questions. This is a broad overview of, um, what
I believe garden programs should be. So the first key facilitation strategy. Now, uh, this is about how
you actually engage as the facilitator with your students,
with your, your little gardeners. Okay? So the first one is
experiential learning, right? This is all about learning by
doing, which is perfectly suited to the garden environment, right? So think about how much more memorable
and impactful it is for students to actually plant seeds, water them, watch
them grow, prepare them, you know, uh, cook them, eat them, serve them to others,
and watch the reactions they eat them. Imagine how impactful it is for
all of that, rather than just reading about it in a textbook or
watching a YouTube video, right? It’s absolutely imperative that
every single student has frequent opportunities to interact directly
with the garden itself, right? They must be allowed to touch it, to
see it, to smell it, to taste it, right? Never tell a child to not put soil
in their mouth or, you know, we want them to use their senses. We want them to experience
the garden fully. Okay? So I won’t go through these
in too much detail, but direct engagement, active discovery. Those of you who are teachers who
have studied educational science, uh, understand many of these sensory
engagement, emotional connection, and there’s much more, right? So we can, we can go through these in
more detail, but I’ll leave it for now. If you have any questions, I can
always come back to this slide. The next, uh, I wanna talk about
inquiry based learning, which is another powerful strategy for
garden based education, right? Inquiry based learning. Um, empowers students to become
active seekers of knowledge, right? So instead of just presenting information,
which I call the push of learning, uh, we actually encourage students
to ask questions and explore answers, which I call the pull of learning. So rather than pushing education onto
students, we’re allowing the students to pull the information that they’re
most curious about, because that’s the stuff they’re gonna retain and
they’re gonna learn anyway, right? So we really want them to become
active seekers of knowledge, right? And, you know, this approach really
turns the garden into a living lab where curiosity drives learning
rather than just structure on its own. So we could, of course, ask
thought provoking questions. Um, once their curiosity has peaked, we
can guide them through an investigative approach using experiments, research,
different observations to find answers. Uh, we can develop problem
solving skills, which is a natural outcome of inquiry based learning. And then, you know, reflecting on
that inquiry process, which we’ll talk a bit more about reflective
learning in a moment, but, uh, reflecting on, on what you discover
through your inquisition is crucial. Right? After conducting your investigations,
you should consider what worked, what didn’t, why, right? This reflection is gonna help them
understand their learning journey and reinforce the knowledge that they gain. Now cooperative learning is all
about students working together to achieve common goals, right? Um, this is something, of course,
those of you who are teachers, you know, the power of this already. You know, the garden is a
perfect setting for this, right? It naturally lends itself to teamwork,
to collaboration, which makes learning a shared and enjoyable experience. It’s, it’s kind of the
default of the garden, right? Rarely is gardening a solo act. Excuse me. So I’m just gonna double click here just
for a moment, because in cooperative learning, you know, students often take
on specific roles within their group. So it gives them a sense of learning
how to organize, how to play to each other’s strengths, right? So imagine a team where one student is
responsible for recording observations, another is responsible for planting,
you know, another for watering. You know, this sort of division
of labor ensures that everyone has a role to play and contributes
to the group’s success, right? So for instance, in a salad garden
workshop, you know that you’d be delivering, one student could research
the best conditions for growing lettuce while another prepares the soil. And another one. Plants the seeds or
something like this, right? So, um, and then, and then the planning
itself, like in the middle of winter, most of the garden workshops that I’ve started
have been started in February, right? And, you know, here we engage in
collaborative planning, right? This project-based collaboration
that you see here, encouraging students to work together to
design the garden plots, right? This, this includes, you know,
discussing what plants to include, how to space them, where to place each one. This process really helps them
learn to, gosh, it helps ’em to negotiate, to compromise, to
make decisions as a team, right? It makes the project more engaging
because they actually have ownership over the garden design. Now, place-based education is
about connecting, learning to the local environment around
them to the community, right? It makes it more relevant and engaging. So when a student can tie the
lesson to what they see and hear and experience around them, whether
it’s culturally across time or just environmentally, you know, in their
space, what they observe, what they see going on, um, it makes it more
relevant and engaging for them, right? And then they retain the information
better, whatever it is you’re trying to teach them through the garden. So the garden gives
you the portal to that. It gives you a sort of, uh, tie into place
because it is rooted in the place, in the culture, the climate, the, the ecosystem,
the, the context in which it’s planted. Right. So the garden becomes this ideal place
to implement it because it’s actually rooted in the local environment. It can easily incorporate
cultural and historical elements. So place-based education, again, I’ll,
I’ll, I won’t, um, dwell too much as this, but on this, but you know, the
local environment becomes your classroom. There’s a lot of cultural relevance. Community involvement is a
huge piece of it, which we’ll talk to as we move on as well. And then finally, we
have reflective practice. So you may have noticed mention of
reflective practice throughout this presentation so far, but reflective
practice is all about encouraging students to think critically about
their learning experiences, right? So in the garden, this becomes this super
powerful tool to help students actually internalize and make sense of what
they’ve learned, but it also allows them to speak to their future selves, right? And I remember one of the first things
I found of my grandfathers after he passed away was his garden journal. And, um, oftentimes it wasn’t
even about gardening at all. It was just a daily journal that
he kept about the weather or about, uh, something that was occurring
with a neighbor or what have you. But this became an invaluable resource
later on for me to reference, to think about how I, I took over my
grandfather’s home, um, at that time to think about how the ecosystem
in that space is gonna behave. How interactions, how the shade
works, how the weather affects the space, you know, um, the next, next
to this fence gets more sun and things dry more, or whatever it is. Um, it becomes an invaluable
resource later on. So don’t discount the importance of daily
notes and a garden journal, even if it feels like those observations are mundane
or, uh, not applicable at the time. Self-reflection, journaling for
growth discussion as insight, right? Feedback loops. This is really important, right? So obviously there’s group
reflection, which is valuable, right? You can facilitate group discussions
where students can share, excuse me, their reflections, um, which allows ’em
to learn from each other’s experiences. Right? Now these can be particularly
enriching ’cause they provide different perspectives and insights. So, for example, you know, after a
group project, students can discuss what worked well, what didn’t, why, right? And then it helps them see the
project from multiple angles. Um, what’s really important here
is that we’re able to observe the feedback that we get from the
garden, from our failures, right? And our successes to see what’s
happening, to internalize that feedback, and then leverage that
feedback in order to interact again. So there’s a principle in
principle Principle, yeah. In something called Permaculture
design, which is something that I teach. Maybe you’re familiar
with it, maybe you’re not. But there’s a principle
called Observe and Interact. And the idea here is that
we’re observing our ecosystem. We’re collecting feedback, we’re
accepting the feedback, and then we’re interacting with the ecosystem as a
result, being informed by that feedback. And when students learn to do that,
that is a, a nudge toward what I call ecoliteracy, which is the ability to read
and interpret the ecosystem around them. So those are the five key facilitation,
uh, techniques or principles. Um, but there’s one more bonus
one, and arguably the most important, which is to make it fun. Don’t be boring. I’m putting it out there just
to, to tease a little bit, but. We want it to be fun, right? When students feel like it’s
another chore, when you feel like it’s another chore, um, you’re
gonna be less apt to participate. So it needs to be fun for you. The facilitator needs to be
fun for the teachers involved. It needs to be fun for the school. It needs to be fun, especially
for the students involved. Gardening doesn’t have to be a chore. It doesn’t have to be hard work. Sometimes it is, but it’s hard work. Uh, that gives a sense of
collaborative accomplishment, right? So let the garden be a fun space. Let it be a little wild, right? Let let us, uh, uh, run around barefoot
and jump and roll and accidentally step on something and oops, it’s fun. All right, so I’ve just got a couple
more slides here and then we can, uh, I’m gonna go through these really
quickly, which is just gonna give you a preview of the workshops. I’m not gonna spend a lot of time here
because you’re getting every single one of these workshops that I’m gonna
show you as part of your package after this, after this, um, session. So if you’re here live,
you’re gonna get it via email. If you’re watching this as a recording
later, uh, probably somewhere on this page on which you’re watching this,
there’ll be a download link for you. Okay? So seasonal workshop delivery. So I start with fall workshops because
that’s what we’re heading into. Uh, we’re starting into the, uh,
you know, into the school year. So there’s a series of fall
workshops that we can work on, right? Harvesting techniques, herbal
remedies, seed saving, biodiversity. These are things we can start
to do, um, throughout the fall. Composting is a great way to
start a garden, especially if your plan is to start a garden. But, oh, we’re not actually gonna
get started until the spring. That’s great. Start composting right now. You’re gonna have all the
soil you need by then. Cover cropping, green manure you can
do if you’re putting a garden to bed. Um, I can answer questions about that. If you have any. Preparing the garden for winter,
putting it to bed, mulching it. All of these activities become potential
for learning experiences, and you can find out where your curriculum links to any
one of these specific, uh, uh, activities. And in, in the packet that I’m gonna
give you, uh, each workshop has a series of curriculum connections
attached to it that you can review. Uh, and hopefully that inspires you and
informs your ability to link your, your curriculum, whatever it is you’re working
with, um, to the, to the workshop itself. In the winter. Still a great time to focus on
planning and indoor activities. So as a result is actually
the best time to launch your school garden program, right? So there’s some examples here that
you’ll see of, um, of activities. Uh, spring is a time of renewal
and growth in the garden, right? It makes it perfect for activities that. Prepare the garden for the upcoming
growing season, right early spring. That is for school settings. It’s really imperative that you
get some quick growing crops in. So you’re gonna see things like
salad growing workshop here. And um, this is beautiful because
you can grow a lot of leafy greens things, spinach, lettuce,
Swiss chard, uh, radishes. These are all very fast growing
things that you will definitely be able to harvest before June. And if you’re in a conventional
school setting, you really want your students to have some sort of
harvest before school is out, right? Starting seeds indoors is possible
too, uh, in the spring, um, if it’s before the frost day, right? So if you’re march, April, you’re
probably gonna start a lot of your seeds indoors for summer growing, and
we’ll talk about the summer later. Um, but then you’re also gonna
direct seed, you know, your salad garden, garden outside now. Summer is, and we’ll talk about summer
maintenance, uh, later if you’re in a conventional school setting. But summer is still a great
time to learn in the garden. Uh, even if your kids are out of
school, there’s still a lot of opportunity to bring others in to
the garden throughout the summer. So, again, we can talk about that and
I can talk about various contexts and applications for summer maintenance. Uh, but you know, summer’s a time of rapid
growth and productivity in the garden. There’s no denying it for
a typical school setting. It’s also a timeless student absence. So we’ll talk about, again, we’ll
talk about summer maintenance in the upcoming, uh, uh, module or part. But, you know, you can note right
now the hint, I guess, would be that daycare program, summer camps, you
know, several other community and youth groups can actually take advantage
of the school garden throughout the summer while the students,
the core students are away, right? So listed here are some examples of
summer workshops that you can conduct. I’ll let you look at the overview
here without reading through them. And again, you’re being provided
every single one of these workshops as a, as an individual document. Yep. So, in addition to the facilitator
guides, I’ve got a lot of bonus resources for you that I’m gonna provide to you. Uh, growing up organic is a program that I
worked with for several years in Ontario. So there’s a, a lot of great
resources there on their website. Uh, seed Change, I worked with them
when they were formerly, uh, USC Canada. They’re called Seed Change now. You can go check them
[email protected]. And then the Asia Con Con
Con, lemme try that again. The Nature Conservancy has a lot of
resources as well that you can check out. Now, as part of your package, you’re
getting, uh, these garden planning cards. Um, these come in sheets
of four per sheet. They’re meant to be principle. Now, what I would do with these
cards, this is gonna teach you how to, um, how to garden per square foot. So it’s gonna help you learn and
help your students plan the garden, but also learn how many, like what,
what are the plant spacings, right? How many, uh, spinach seeds can I put in
one square foot in this case, nine, right? So you’re gonna divide one square
foot into nine smaller squares, and then you’re gonna place one seed in
the middle of each square, right? It tells you what are
its favorite companions. In the case of spinach, um, you’re
gonna put them near peas or beans because they’re leguminous and they’re
tall and they form a bit of shade. And, you know, spinach actually
likes a little bit of shade. Um, spinach does okay in the
sun, but I, I think it actually does great in partial shade. And you wanna plant your seeds
outside before the last frost, and they’ll be ready for picking in. Get this six weeks guys. So the amount of produce
that you can grow, right? Imagine nine spinach seeds
per square, that’s nine plants in one square foot, right? I had a question earlier about urban
growing, especially if you’re working in a small space, things like spinach, you
can grow a lot of food in a small space if you’re strategic about how you place it. And these garden planning cards are
gonna help you plan your garden. They’re gonna help you plant your garden
and they’re a lot of fun to work with. So I would print the pages, I would
cut them into four squares and have them laminated so that they’re
waterproof and can be brought out into the garden and have multiple copies. So I’m giving these to you guys and uh,
I would love to, to see you do that. What you’re also getting is a Del
Gardening guide called Good Bug. Bad Bug. This is a document that helps
you identify pests and predators in the garden and understand,
uh, what insects you’re seeing. And it helps your students identify
insects in the garden, whether they’re, uh, pests, they’re eating
your plants or their predators would eat the pests, right? And that brings us to
a close for this part. Not too bad. Uh, so Matt, I’m gonna turn it over
to you there for maybe some more q and a and we can take a break. I think we’re about halfway through. Yeah. I just wanna say I love those resources. Those, those cards are awesome. I would totally put those in like
my gardening toolbox and just always have them there, have a
whole stack of them, you know? Totally. There’s so much fun. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, so one of the questions from
the previous part that we didn’t get to earlier was, uh, they were
asking, can you please go over the part about crop rotation again? Hmm. Yeah, I’ll go over that a little bit briefly. Um, but it might require some
independent research on your part. So what do I mean by crop rotation? So, crop rotation is the
act of not planting the same thing in one place twice. Now, there’s a lot of plants that don’t
require a lot of nutrient intake, then you can get away with planting them two,
three years in a row in the same place. So there are exceptions to the rule,
but as a general rule of thumb, general rule of green thumb, perhaps,
ha ha, um, you don’t wanna plant the same thing in one place twice. Now, why is this? It is because each plant
requires different minerals and nutrients from the soil. So as the plant draws those minerals
and nutrients, the soil starts to become slightly deficient in whatever
those min minerals and nutrients are. So if you move, uh, one plant, let’s say
tomatoes, right, uh, soe, if you move them away from that space because they require
a lot of nitrogen, for example, and then you put some sort of leguminous plant
or something from, you know, the cabbage family or something from the carrot
family in that place, it’s going to ask. Something different of that soil. And so what you’re doing is you’re
maximizing what that soil has to offer. Now that doesn’t give you an excuse not to
nourish your soil, not to add compost, to add minerals and nutrients along the way. Um, but it does also reduce pests
and disease pressure because a lot of pests and diseases will
actually kind of camp out in the place where their food right exists. But if you take that food away and
put it somewhere else next year, you’re gonna confuse them and you’re
actually gonna reduce pest pressure. So it’s really just a best practice
crop rotation just becomes this sort of best practice of acting as nature
does, which is being in motion. Nothing is static in the garden. Makes sense. And kind of related to that,
the next question, uh, yes. About the, well, it’s
not really a question. More of a request, I guess. Yes. About the soil amendments, please. Or max yields specifically
in part two Yes. About the soil amendments you had. I think you had touched on something
to do with soil amendments there and the person’s taking you up on it. We can revisit that later,
or Well, we can revisit it. Yeah. I, I mean it’s, or specify in the chat if
you would please, if that’s your question. What if you could expand
on that a bit, please. Sure. I, I would say as a general, again,
a general rule of thumb is all I can give because, um, the answer for
most garden questions is, it depends. And the way that I take, um, the way
that I take, the way that I diagnose kind of issues or things that I
observe in the garden, is to really try and trace it down to the root
and look at the ecosystem as a whole. So I diagnose the ecosystem as a whole. So rather than isolating one thing, I
look at the whole ecosystem and I think what is going on now, sometimes what is
going on is that your soil is depleted. Now, here’s what I’m gonna tell you. I do not perform soil tests. I almost never perform a pH
test because the acidity in your soil is ever changing anyway. So unless you suspect that something
is extreme, like you’re planting underneath a bunch of pine trees or
something, I don’t think it’s necessary. Um, I rarely actually look
at the specific minerals. What I do instead is I look at how
my ecosystem is behaving, I look at what’s already growing in place,
and I use that as a judgment for what the soil conditions might be. In addition to a few other things,
like a soil jar test, which is taking clumps of soil, putting it in a
jar, filling it with water, shaking it, and letting it rest for a day. And seeing the different layers form
where you’re gonna have layers of clay, silt, and, and loam, uh, sand rather. So you’re gonna see how
your soil is composed. That’s an important observation. Um, and then you’ll see what plants
are already growing, because those plants will tell you what minerals and
nutrients they’re taking advantage of now. Almost always compost and
mulch are the answer, right? And sometimes compost is mulch in
the case of a densely planted bed. But, um, just adding high organic
matter is often all that is required for a healthy garden. Now you can do other things. You can add calcium in the form
of bone meal or blood meal. Um, you can buy mushroom compost,
which is a little different. You can add, uh, you know, if you’re
growing a lot of fruiting plants like tomatoes, there’s a product that I like
to use called fish emulsion, which is a high nitrogen fertilizer made of fish pea. You know, so there’s a lot
of opportunities there for leveraging waste as a resource. But the answer to how should I
amend my soil is always, it depends and requires, uh, some observation
and you won’t get it right, right away, and that’s totally fine. But what I want you to avoid
doing is thinking, I can’t do this because my plants keep dying, or
my, I just can’t grow in my yard because my soil won’t allow it. Um, not true. You can always change it. Nature is always in motion. I think we’ve got time for
one more question here. Um, and folks, if for whatever
reason we don’t get to your question today, we’ll definitely follow up
with you after the webinar and, and get that answered for you. Um, this one’s interesting, Al. Are there any local authorities
that you can recommend for animal habitat education? Would like to attract more birds and
work with local conservation authorities to protect some of our rare species. That’s something you can help with, or depends where you are. Where I, uh, am and where Matt is,
uh, there are conservation authorities embedded with local government. You can connect with them
to see what you can do. Oftentimes they have native, uh,
flora and fauna, uh, rehabilitation programs, bat houses, right? Oftentimes they’ll give away bat
houses if, uh, or, uh, turtle habitat or, you know, free seeds
for pollinator, um, enhancement. Um, so there’s a lot that you can do. I would say you could become
the expert very quickly, or, oops, I said the wrong word. Double standards. Um, you, you could become the go-to
person for this, essentially, right? By just doing some research, educating
yourself a little bit more than those around you, and actually observing the
ecosystem to see what works and just doubling down and doing more of that. That is most of my experience. Um, you know, if you’re really
concerned about, or maybe not concerned, but rightfully, uh, inspired. To enhance local wildlife, excuse me. Uh, and enhance local biodiversity. Then sometimes doing something as
simple as putting a rotting log on the ground, um, you know, letting
things dig holes, uh, letting a few things just grow wild and untouched. Having what I call a zone five in your
garden, which is kind of an untouched wild space that you just leave alone. Um, you know, bird houses, bat
houses, uh, plant milkweed for monarch butterflies, right? There’s a lot of strategies that you
can take and it just depends what is the deficiency in your local area? What are the quote unquote
native plants, um, in your area? What are the, the, what’s already growing? What wants to, what wants to
be encouraged in your space? And, and just, you know, do
a little bit of research. We’re blessed with the magic of the
internet now, so most questions can be answered if we know what to ask. Yeah, and we might as well get
to this next question ’cause it’s directly related, so knock this one
out and there’s still more coming in. So how else can I attract pollinators? I think you’ve, you’ve answered that,
but this, this person’s in the suburbs of a big city and they say they’re
seeing less and less of them over time. It’s funny because the suburbs
actually give you the greatest opportunity to increase biodiversity
because you have beautiful edge. So the suburbs are wonderful because
you have just enough space to really be able to do something with, um, and, and
enough edge between whatever property lines, trees, um, in order to increase,
you know, it’s, it’s just this, this opportunity that is often wasted. I think to your point, maybe
that’s what you’re observing. So, um, this, you could be this
shining light of bio, this island of biodiversity in the suburbs, but more
importantly, if you do it right, you’ll inspire your neighbors to do the same. So how can you do it? I mean, really just start planting things. Maybe start by replacing your lawn, um,
and just start planting, not necessarily just a high production food garden or
something like this, although I recommend it, but scale that to your desire. Um, but often just planting a lot
of native plants, planting a meadow instead, and observing that, uh,
as part of your garden program or, uh, you know, planting a bunch of
trees and different layers, right? There’s a lot that can be done
in order to increase habitat. Um, as long as you are okay with
a little bit of untidiness, a little bit of wildness in your
garden, you’ll be just fine. You could be, I think you said you could
be a beacon of light in your community. I love that. That’s awesome. Imagery. Yes. Yeah, well said. All right, so we’ll get to our break now
and, um, we’ll really encourage everybody to really do some earthing, like for real. I’m gonna get out there too and, and
get barefoot on the ground and take some mo a moment to discharge and
recharge and all that good stuff. Um, someone else was asking here as well. Might as well get this out of the way too. Uh, will the slides be provided later? Yes. For anybody that just joined all
the slides, um, the recording link and Al’s amazing toolkit will
be coming within 24 hours or so. Okay. So, uh, part three of the course, right? In this one we’re gonna talk about
the importance of building a strong community around your garden program. We’re gonna look at identifying
key stakeholders, you know, and creating mutually beneficial
relationships with those stakeholders. And we’re gonna talk about
coordinating volunteers. So remember the principles that we
discussed in, in, in part one, right? And educational garden is resilient. Resilient requires redundancy, right? And just like in nature, diversity or
a diversity of support, I should say, is key to long-term success, right? With, uh, robust and diverse support
from the community, your program is far more likely to become a long-term asset. So that’s what I’m gonna be talking
about, uh, in this, in this part here. Mm-hmm. Okay, so we’re gonna talk about, you
know, what is a stakeholder, okay? We’re gonna learn to identify
and engage the key stakeholders that can actually help launch
and support your program, right? Uh, we’ll talk about
what that can include. Then we’re gonna talk about some
steps towards mutually beneficial relationships, um, uh, mostly in the
form of the eight forms of capital. So if you’re not familiar
with that, don’t worry. We will jump into it and I’ll give
you a really good overview and maybe some fuel for further research. And then finally, we’ll talk about
coordinating those volunteers, which really, I mean, for the most part,
volunteer to the lifeblood of many, you know, educational garden programs. And I think if we can just implement some
effective kind of reciprocal volunteer management strategies, then we can
have a really resilient, really, you know, sustainable regenerative garden. Uh, so we’re gonna talk about how to
recruit, organize, and even motivate your volunteers to ensure that they
actually feel valued and engaged. Um, and then we’ll talk about some
best practices for coordinating their activities and really ultimately
just creating a positive, inclusive environment for everyone involved. So what is a stakeholder? Let’s start with that question, right? A stakeholder is anyone who
has an interest in the success of your garden program, right? So identifying and engaging
your key stakeholders is really crucial for launching and
supporting your program, right? So key stakeholders and educational
programs can include, you know, students, uh, parents, teachers,
educators, administrators. Local community members, local businesses,
local government, nonprofit organizations, local farms, gardening experts,
local chefs, volunteer coordinators, volunteers themselves, right? People in the neighborhood, right? Each one of these stakeholders brings
unique resources and perspectives that can help your program thrive
and ultimately be resilient. So I wanna talk about some of
those stakeholders too, and we’ll double click on those. So obviously, students are
the primary learners, right? They’re actively engaging and providing
feedback on the garden activities. I want you to think of your students
as stakeholders within your garden, though it’s very important that their
feedback is incorporated because it is imperative that the students feel
a sense of ownership over the garden. That it isn’t something that they’re
participating in, but something that they own, that they’re responsible for,
that’s going to enhance the learning that they achieve as a result of using
the Educational Garden program as a tool to teach your curriculum, right? So they bring the energy, they
bring the curiosity, and their involvement is absolutely imperative
for the program’s success. Now, parents can offer volunteer support. They can assist in fundraising, right? They can promote community awareness,
they can lead activities like, uh, whatever, a family garden day, right? They can help with fundraising events
like plant sales, perhaps to raise money for your, for your program. Or they can just spread the
word through community groups, like online or in person, right? Now, teachers and educators, right? And I say teachers and educators because
I wanna, you know, if you, whatever position you’re in, if you’re involved
with youth, you are an educator, right? So even if you’re not engaged in youth,
frankly, um, you’re gonna integrate those garden activities into curriculum and
you’re gonna facilitate the learning. You’re gonna use the garden for
practical lessons and subjects like biology by studying plant life cycles,
or math by measuring plant growth rates or whatever, whatever it is, right? So then we have administrators, right? Unsung heroes often, but administrators
allocate resources and they embed the garden in the schools educational goals. That’s their job. So they can facilitate resources,
they can integrate the garden with school objectives. They can approve programs like, you know,
uh, a garden internship program for older students to gain credits, which is a
concrete, a real example of, um, of a high school program that I participated in. Now we have local businesses, right? Community members as well, but
local businesses can supply, uh, resources for funding, right? Um, which obviously benefits from
that community engagement or they benefit from that community engagement. You can partner with local. Nurseries for plant donations
in exchange for advertising. It’s a great example you can partner with. These are all concrete
examples from my experience. Uh, you can partner with hardware
stores for, you know, wood again in exchange for some sort of exposure. Um, I’ve received, uh, funding for
an educational garden program from a recycling plant, which recycled metals,
and they had a budget every year for some sort of charitable donation. They, some workers there had kids that
went to the school, and so, um, they helped steer those funds into our program. Right? So these are some examples of how you
can partner with, um, local businesses to actually achieve some goals for
material and financial resources. Okay. Community members as well, right? So, uh, neighbors, people who live
around the school or around the, around the garden who might be
encouraged to become advocates and partners within the garden as well. Now, local government can give you
grants, some permissions if you needed, um, some support to align with the
community development or the development of your garden program as a whole. Um, they can help you
apply for community grants. Uh, you can request the use of public
spaces to expand garden projects. Um, these are pretty effective
ways to, to gain their support. Um, and I can talk about, you
know, if there are any questions I can talk about how to pitch these
types of programs to a community council, which I’ve had to do before. Um. I think there’s a lot of win-wins
here with municipal government, and then there’s nonprofit organizations. Most of the work that I’ve done in my
career has been through nonprofit, um, aside from, uh, my entrepreneurial work. So in the nonprofit world, you know, we
have infrastructure for sharing resources, sharing expertise, um, collaborating
on grants for sustainability, right? ’cause oftentimes they’ll have
coordinators in place or grant writers in place, or at the very least,
have the legal structure to be able to receive grants, larger grants,
seed grants, growth grants, three year, uh, grants for your programs. These are the things that are gonna
fund your garden to get started, right? So working with any sort of environmental,
food, agriculture, nonprofit, uh, you can work with them to offer
workshops in the garden, right? So there’s, you could, hi. You can even work with them
to hire positions, right? Some of the earlier positions that I’ve
had in this space that got my foot in the door here were actually paid coordinator
positions that were fueled by a grant that that nonprofit had received. Lemme take a quick sip of water here. Okay, so three more here. Uh, local farmers. These are my favorite folks. Gardening experts. Uh, they often, they can offer, uh,
garden and farm-based knowledge, right? Skills, resources. You can host a farmer’s talk where
local farmers come into the classroom and share insights on crop rotation
or soil health, or answer questions. Talk about their farm
as an ecosystem, right? So now you can see, you can
bridge that urban rural divide if that’s your situation. Um, but you can also kind of think
about how the garden applies at a larger scale at a farm scale. And we’ve done a lot of farm
field trips where we’ve pulled the students out of the class. We had some funding for a bus, and
we would bring the kids out to, uh, farms in order to, uh, actually engage
with that piece of property as well. And again, many of them actually
were inspired to become farmers and did as a result of, of our,
of our projects, which is a very humbling experience to, to see that. Local chefs, again, some of my
favorite people because I love food. That was my entry point into
gardening, was delicious food, right? So local chefs can engage with
the garden to incorporate fresh produce into their menus, right? If you have a kitchen or a cafeteria
at your school, how can you integrate the garden into that piece? Um, you know, instead of serving, you
know, burgers and hot dogs and sins, could you, could you integrate garden
produce into the cafeteria, right? If that’s your situation, you can
collaborate on having a harvest dinner where chefs can create dishes using
the garden’s produce to demonstrate this, you know, farm to table concept. You can invite a chef in, in order
to do a cooking demonstration or even a lesson, right? So how can you integrate that local
chefs and restaurants into your program? And then, uh, volunteer
coordinators, right? So these are often
sometimes paid positions. Often it’s a parent volunteer. I’d say most of the time it’s been
a volunteer on the parent council. In my, in my context, these are people
who will manage volunteer recruitment, scheduling, and retention, right? Um, because we think of our educational
garden program as an enterprise, um, and so we wanna be able to retain
the active stakeholders, the people who provide value to our enterprise. We want to keep them
within that community. So we want them to feel valued, right? So that’s what I mean by retention. Um, we could develop, you know, a
mentorship program where experienced volunteers guide newcomers. Basically, it gives you this consistent
and knowledgeable volunteer base. Everybody learns together, right? That’s the the concept
we’re trying to create here. So I’m gonna leave this, I’m gonna
give you a moment to scan this image. This speaks to the eight forms of capital. And I show you this, this was
originally part of a, another, uh, program that I had put on. Um, but very important to understand
or have at least a more holistic view of the resources that you already have. And it’s like that old Scotiabank
saying, you’re richer than you think. Well, this actually, you know,
I’m actually being honest about it in this case, right? So, um, you have more than you think you
have if you take the time to inventory the resources you have access to. Now, I provided this in the context of a
homestead design, a rural homestead design course, a permaculture design course. And in that we’re thinking
about what resources we have to develop a piece of property. So I, I just want you to apply
that to the idea of the educational garden program for a moment. There’s obviously some form of
financial capital needed, right? Money. Um, this is the most straightforward
form of capital includes money, income, savings, investments,
loans, whatever it is. Um, but while financial contributions
are often crucial for purchasing materials and funding your
activities, they’re actually just one. Small part of the overall picture. And in fact, there are other
forms of capital that are often far more helpful in allowing you
to facilitate your educational garden program material capital. These are your physical objects
and infrastructure, equipment, tools, buildings, technology. So for our garden program, this
could include donated gardening tools, greenhouse supplies, even
the construction of garden beds. So thinking about these key stakeholders
that we just talked about, thinking about what resources you have,
these are your yields, these are the things that you have to use toward
your educational garden program. Thinking about your needs, the
needs of your garden program that aren’t currently being met by
one of these forms of capital. And then the needs and yields of
stakeholders outside of your system, of your educational garden program, and
what sort of reciprocal relationship can you create where needs and yields
are being shared so that there’s some sort of balance so that the
resources that you need are being acquired by moving your excess and
providing value to somebody else. Right? Hopefully that makes sense. Living capital. So this refers to the biological and
ecological resources in our garden. Animals. Plants, soil, water, right? Healthy soil and diverse plant
life are absolutely fundamental through a thriving garden. So stakeholders can really contribute
to living capital by donating plants, seeds, compost, or even expertise
in whatever sustainable gardening practices that they practice. Social capital. These are the relationships, the
networks, the connections that we build with our community, right? This includes our relationships with
our volunteers, our local businesses, our community organizations,
friends, neighbors, family, right? Um, social capital is really critical for
fostering collaboration support, right? So, for example, you might have
a local gardening club nearby. They might offer some
volunteer hours, right? This is a way of them contributing social
capital or a community center could give you space for workshops in the
summer or something like this, right? Um, then there’s spiritual capital. Now, this one, um, is a little more
intangible for a lot of folks, right? But this includes, you know, the, as
those, those more intangible aspects of our beliefs and values, our faith,
our intention, our positive mental states, our, our actual connection
to the natural world, right? Then the context of our garden program. This might involve fostering a
sense of purpose and community among participants, right? Promoting mindfulness through
garden activities, or engaging in rituals that celebrate the
garden’s growth and harvest, right? Or, um, depending on your context,
partnering with a church or a faith group, um, uh, this is, this is
an exchange of spiritual capital. Now experiential capital are the
skills, the knowledge, the physical experience that you gained or that
these key stakeholders have gained, uh, from hands-on activities. So for our garden program, this
is the practical skills that students and volunteers develop. It’s also like, you know,
planting techniques, soil management, composting, right? So experiential capital can be
shared, can be provided through workshops, demonstrations,
hand-on learning opportunities. If you have somebody that has a lot
of gardening experience that they can share, then that is a valuable
resource that you can provide to others. So one way of recruiting volunteers
is saying, well, come and join us. We have a master gardening on,
and you’re gonna learn a lot by volunteering with us, right? This is an exchange of
experiential capital. Intellectual capital is the knowledge and
ideas that support our garden program. This could be educational materials,
curriculum integration, innovative gardening techniques, right? I’m providing you with a lot of
intellectual capital in the form of the kit that you’re gonna get
following this, um, this session. And that kit contains a lot of
intellectual capital that I’ve accumulated throughout the years that I’m, you know,
providing freely to you to leverage and to build your own experiences with right? To build off of. Um, and then there’s cultural capital. This is the one that can’t be built alone. This is the traditions, the arts,
the stories, the rituals that enrich. Our community, right? Um, so in our garden program,
this could be celebrating cultural practices related to gardening. It could be leveraging cultural groups
in our area, um, to help teach us about cultural practices in the garden. Uh, indigenous planting methods,
seasonal harvest festivals, storytelling events that connect
gardening with local heritage, right? So this is a form of cultural capital. What sort of culture, uh, exists
in your place and how can you leverage that in a very positive,
mutually beneficial, positive way? So the reason that I took some time
on this is because recognizing and leveraging these eight forms of
capital will lead us to creating more holistic and regenerative,
um, gardens, essentially, right? It’ll, it’ll, it’ll, it’ll allow us to
build our educational garden community in a more holistic manner without
only relying on something like money. Each form of capital offers unique
value, and by engaging stakeholders in diverse ways, we can foster
stronger, much more resilient relationships that really benefit
everyone involved in multiple ways. So we’re creating these complex ecosystems
of value exchange, and the garden becomes the midyear for all of that. All right, so let’s get
into the big question. The question that I get asked
first, almost always is, but al what about summer break? Look, there are a myriad of
possibilities here, and I’ve spoken to some of them already. You can involve other programs
and organizations, youth groups, summer camps, uh, daycares can all
be involved throughout the summer in order to continue the program. I’ve never really had a problem with this. Usually, uh, volunteers will step up
and a volunteer coordinator will step up and they’ll say, we’ve got this. I’ve partnered with mental
health organizations. Um, I’ve partnered with, uh, daycares. I’ve partnered with just summer camps,
uh, summer camp programs, um, just community volunteers, neighbors. Uh, I have volunteered
for them often enough. Um, and the benefit there is of
course, we get to garden, right? We get to actually leverage the
garden as a sort of community garden. So, um, you know, sometimes you
just need to rely on good old fashioned community support. But if you approach the value exchange
from a holistic perspective, right? So maybe take some time and, and take
inventory of your eight forms of capital as a group, as a collective, as a project. What do you have access to and what
do you have to offer volunteers? And just start there, right? What can you offer these people
who are willing to come in and participate in the garden throughout
the summer when the kids are not there? If that is your context. Uh, and start there. What can I offer them so that they want
to and benefit greatly from participating in my program throughout the summer? So I’m gonna talk now, um, fairly
quickly about how to manage volunteers. I’m gonna give you a lot
of resources for this. So I’m not gonna spend a lot
of time in this presentation ’cause I’m cognizant of the time. Um, but I’m gonna go through this
a little bit quickly and then I’ll encourage you to review the resources
and ask any questions that you might have about volunteer management. Okay? So first we wanna identify the needs
for volunteer support, especially during the summer months when school’s out. But the garden obviously
still requires care, right? Because we want the students to
come in September to a thriving garden, not to a big mess of
weeds or, or what have you, right? Which, by the way, there’s nothing
inherently wrong with weeds that are just good plants in the wrong place. Um, so we wanna start with
garden maintenance tasks, right? So regular watering, weeding, pest
control, these are all things that are, uh, and I say pest control. We do that through biodiversity. It’s more pest identification. Sometimes plants die. This is a part of nature, right? And then we wanna, um, you know, work
on harvesting and planting timely harvesting of ripe produce, right? We want the garden to be picked. We don’t wanna leave those
tomatoes in the vine. We want to actually pick them. If students aren’t around to do so,
then we want whoever’s managing it throughout the summer to enjoy the
benefit of their labor and actually be able to pick those summer crops. And so students who wanna reward the
volunteers that participate in the garden program throughout the summer,
we’ll plant things like tomatoes and cucumbers and zucchini in order to
provide a yield to the people who so graciously give you their time. This is a value exchange and not a single
dollar was spent in order to achieve it. Preparation for fall is
another thing, right? So you might have some, um, uh, uh,
volunteers who might start indoor seed starting for fall, planting a
fall planting, uh, fall planted thing. So if you have tomatoes growing in
your garden and you would like to put spinach in there to grow that until
October, November, even then you could even start some spinach in a cup or
a little egg carton or something. And once those tomatoes are
spent, you pull them out, you replace them with spinach, right? This is called successional planting. So then we talk about how
to recruit volunteers. So I usually start with
an outreach campaign. You can use social media
community bulletin boards. You can send out an email. I have an email template for you. So if you are, uh, a teacher working
in a school, I have a an email template that you can send out to parents
of your class if you’d like to. You use platforms like Instagram
for quick garden updates. You can post flyers on
local community boards. You can engage with online
community groups, right? Essentially you wanna consider
reaching out to individuals who have previously contributed to
the program, for sure, right? You wanna invite them to participate. Again, you could send out like
a, a we miss you newsletter with a signup link or something. It depends how elaborate
you want to get with it. Um, you can collaborate with, uh, local
community centers, youth organizations, as I mentioned, uh, boys and Girls Club
is one that I’ve worked with a lot. Uh, gardening clubs, right, to recruit
volunteers, and oftentimes even nursing homes, if there’s a nursing
home nearby, it’s a great opportunity for, for folks there, for the
elderly, for our seniors, our elders. Um, you can set up informational
booth at community centers that, you know, gardening events, seed
swaps, you know, CD Saturday. If there’s one of those happening in
your town, there’s usually some sort of group that would be happy to get
involved in an initiative like this. You just need to find them. So this is the invitation to volunteer
email template that I talked about. You’ll have access to
this as part of your kit. You also have, uh, access to these
images and a few other resources to help you identify common pests and weeds. So, uh, it’s important if you’re
gonna recruit volunteers to have some sort of orientation day,
especially if they’re new gardeners. If they’re experienced, then they’ll
probably teach the orientation day. But, um, if you have volunteers to
say, yes, I’m, I’m willing, but I’m not sure I, you could provide them
with your garden planning cards. You, I have ecosystem cards that
you’ll have access to, and there’s a few other resources here that
you can provide them as well. And this is, uh, a really, you know,
I, I’ll give you access to this. This is just a simple, simple
example of a volunteer ca, uh, calendar that you could build. Um, you know, you could protect it
from the rain and post it somewhere near the garden, or better yet in
a garden shed or something, uh, just to be able to communicate. And again, you’re building community,
you’re creating a hub, right? So this is a way of you to
being able to coordinate that. So, uh, this, I just wanted to
share with you, is a plant giveaway that we created in order to fund a
community garden program, or rather an educational garden program. So, um, you know, we hosted
this as a community event. A group of experienced gardeners
essentially just gave away free potted plants that they grew and
shared their own expertise while we promoted our school garden program. Right? And as a result of events like this,
many new school garden programs were actually initiated, and several
new volunteers became engaged. This was a community building event
where people gave their time, their experience, their social capital. We leveraged their social capital,
living capital in the form of plants that you see on the ground. These are resources that didn’t
necessarily cost any money because these were material and experiential
resources, um, that, and social resources that these people had and
were more than willing to contribute. And, um, as a result, there was some
beautiful, uh, reciprocity, some beautiful programs that were born. Very grateful. Now here’s a very important part. If you’re engaging in volunteer
coordination, which is no pay, does not mean no compensation. No pay does not mean no compensation. Okay? Recognizing volunteers contributions
really does help retain them and shows appreciation for their hard work. So host appreciation events, right? Provide certificates, acknowledgements,
uh, give them a green thumb award, or hand out some garden tools or offer some
public recognition if nothing else, right? Feature outstanding volunteers in
newsletters or on social media or during public events so that you
can highlight their efforts, right? Um, the goal here is to really have
them feeling incredibly appreciated because of course they are. Right? And here’s just a few resources for
those of you who are interested in diving deeper into how to engage
volunteers, really for any endeavor. Um, there are a lot of passionate
people in every community and someone who believes in your program
enough to offer their time truly is the biggest stakeholder of all. So just be sure that this too is a
mutually beneficial relationship. All right, that brings us
to the end of part three. Matt, I recognize we have about 25 ish minutes. Yeah. We’ll have to speed things up
just a little bit, but, uh, let’s get to the questions. I think that’s how we can make up our time
is if we knock out some of these questions and they’re still, as we’re talking
coming in, but keep ’em coming folks. We’ll, we’ll do our best. So. From the last part, these
might be from part one or two. Still al just so you know, uh,
are indoor worms difficult to maintain and do they attract bugs? Like fruit flies? Okay, um, if they attract fruit flies,
you’re putting too much in there. So only feed them the
capacity they have to eat. Don’t give them meat,
don’t give them citrus. Don’t give them onions and garlic. Uh, if you can avoid those things
and, um, give them a little bit at a time to see how fast they eat
it, then give them a little more. See how fast they eat it. Your bin will not become stinky. You wanna keep it moist. So usually what I do is
I, I’ll use a tote bin. I’ve got a few around me,
but I can’t quite lift them ’cause they’re full of junk. But, uh, a tote bin that I will fill
with, um, essentially substrate, right? So soil your feet, you’re filling it
with like cardboard at the bottom, you know, you can put egg cartons ripped
up into there, that kind of thing. You put your worms in there. Red, regular worms are the
worms that you’re looking for. And these worms, um, on average get this,
we’ll double in population every day. So that’s a lot of worms. Uh, eventually you are inevitably left
with this excess living capital in the form of worms that you can gift to
somebody perhaps in exchange for volunteer work or something like this, you know? But, um, it’s, it’s wonderful actually. And what you get out of
it is a beautiful thing. Um, what you wanna do is also
allow for the worm bin to drain. This is called worm juice. It’s a really kind way to say pee. And it’s, uh, the liquid that
you want to drain to keep it dry. A compost doesn’t get
stinky if it’s kept dry. Um, that’s why composting toilets
work ’cause they separate the urine and the feces, right? So, um, with a worm bin you can
capture that juice, dilute it and use it as a fertilizer for your
tomatoes and fruiting plants. And then the castings that you get
are wonderful opportunity to fertilize your garden and to start seeds. If it gets stinky, it’s ’cause
you’re putting more in there than they have the capacity to eat. Um, and then as your, what I like
to do is, this is a crash course. Now I like to rotationally graze
my worms by, you know, if you think about even dividing your worm bin
into square feet and depositing your compost for the day into one of the
squares, and the next day you move over to the next square and you move over. By the time you get back to
the first square, they should have completely consumed that. And if they haven’t, you don’t have enough
worms or you’re not giving them enough. Start another bin or you’re giving
them too much rather, sorry. Good stuff. Yeah. And a related, uh, question here. Is there some way to compost
outside in the winter? Can you do of course, worms in the winter? No. Well, worms outside will die
depending on where you are, right? Winter for me means minus
20, minus 30, sometimes minus 40, so your worms will die. Um, they’re not like
earthworms like the earthworms. The night crawlers that we’re used
to, that were imported from Europe. These worms, the big ones that you use
for fishing, will go deep into the soil. Red wrigglers actually
stay towards the surface. So, uh, these, and that’s what
makes them composting worms. They’ll die. You definitely wanna bring them in,
at the very least, into a garage. Um, that stays kind of a
little bit above freezing. Um. No, the better way to compost in the
winter is just to have a, a compost pile. The laziest way to do it
is just do cold composting. This is three pallets in
a corner somewhere that’s accessible from your kitchen. Don’t put it too far, you’ll never use it. And, uh, have access to
carbonaceous material. Know what your carbon material
is before you start composting. ’cause otherwise you’re just
gonna have a stinky mess, right? These green bins that municipalities give
you and you just dump your compost into there and they pick it up and throw it in. It’s always gross, right? It’s kind of a ridiculous
way to treat waste, actually. So, um, what we want to do is create a
compost with a lot of carbon material. It’s is straw, hay, even newspaper,
uh, leaves, um, uh, wood chips, right? These are carbonaceous materials
that will absorb the excess nitrogen. So rule of thumb, in a compost,
think of carbon as the diaper and the nitrogen, your food scraps as the poop. If you have too much poop, not
even the diaper can hold onto it. Such vibrant imagery. Uh, I work with, uh,
here’s another question. I work with local and state governments
to implement these types of programs in the community and in schools. If only our programs were this
comprehensive and intuitive, they would be so much more successful. Thank you for sharing your expertise. Al I’m inspired by your work. Thank you for that comment. Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah. And it’s born of many,
many mistakes and a lot of. Uh, difficulty. So my hope is that you can expedite
your program so that you don’t have to go through those, those,
uh, as many of those failures. But again, as I mentioned earlier,
failure is an indicator of success. Another question here, and this brings
us to the end of part two questions. Can I get a copy of the
slides and recording? Absolutely. You can slides, toolkit, and
the recording link will be coming to you within 24 hours. That’s a recurring question. Yeah. So I guess your stuff is
popular Al. It’s a good sign. Great. So now part three questions. Maybe we can bang out a few of
these and get to the last part. Sure. Uh, how can I get more local customers
in the community to buy from my farm? That’s a tough one. Yeah. That’s beyond the scope of this class. Um, if there’s a demand for farm marketing
or, um, how do I leverage, how do I actually treat my farm as a business? How do I sell my products? Um, I do have some
expertise to share there. It is beyond the scope of this program,
but if there’s a desire, send us an email. If there’s enough interest, we’ll
put something together for you. Yep, exactly. This is an interesting one here. Four generations on my farm. Commercial farming has been going on
almost all year round the whole time. So the land’s pretty devastated. It’s only in the last 17 years
or so that we started to bring holistic practices like permaculture. 17. Wow. 17 years. Yeah. So one of the, the
earlier folks there, uh. It’s helping, but the soil still seems to
have be having a hard time despite many amendments, reintroduction of greenery. Any suggestions? Ooh, that’s a very, very loaded
question, and I’m gonna give a very, if you’ve studied permaculture
for 17 years, then you’re already sick of hearing this answer. It depends. It depends. It depends. It depends. Um, it requires thorough
observation and interaction, and each system is uniquely complex. I couldn’t hope to diagnose
that via Zoom call. Um, but if you’re interested in
connecting with a practitioner or somebody that can really help you, uh,
there will be a cost associated to it, but I can certainly connect to you. Yeah, just reach out for follow up and
I’ll give you the email at the end. So this one, this person’s kind
of teasing you a bit here, but Al what about summer break? Revisit the recording. Yeah, I think they’re serious. They wanna know, but yeah, it’s, it’s
already in the, in the presentation. Yep. You already answered that one. Uh, one more question here and
we can go to the last part. Any tips for organizing
stakeholder meetings? In the past, the meetings that
we’ve had were challenging to manage and to keep everyone on track. Again, if there’s interest in this
sort of class, I’m happy to host it. I leverage a, uh, organizational
structure called Sociocracy. Take the time to Google that
and do a bit of research. There are some online courses,
some great online courses that are available for not that much money. If you have an interest in learning
that from Matt and I, uh, we’d be happy to do that for you. But Sociocracy essentially
is a discussion, uh, method in which everybody is heard. And it is, it is beyond democracy in the
sense that it’s not a majority rules. In fact, there has to be a hundred
percent consensus in order to move forward on a decision. Sometimes, and almost always, I
would say that involves compromise. But compromise is a part of
life and Sociocracy honors this. That’s as much as I’ll
say about that for now. There’s a lot to talk about on Sociocracy,
so again, if there’s interest in having a a, a hangout with us about that,
then we can, we can talk about it. Yeah. And we’re quickly running outta time. So back to you Al, and
back to the program. So, yeah, we don’t have too, too many slides left here. I’m gonna go through how to build
your actual garden now, and I’m gonna go through this relatively quickly. Again, you’ll have access
to all of these slides. Okay? Let’s talk about building the
educational guard program now for real. So creating a physical space where
students can engage in hands-on learning is the foundational step
of any garden program, right? What does the space look like? How do we build this space? Now, your space might look like this. This is actually the space of
a a, a friend of mine, Sean Dombroski, he has an amazing
YouTube channel called Edible Acres. You can check that out. Highly, highly recommend. Uh, he runs a nursery from there. This space is kind of wild, right? You have things that you might
consider weeds, you have things that it doesn’t necessarily look tidy. This kind of environment is beautiful
for an educational garden program. And so is a square box
divided into square feet. Um, so the way that you build
it, right, um, really depends on your school’s tolerance for
wildness, for starters, right? And, um, your capacity to manage
or your desire to manage it. Okay? So your garden could look like this. This garden is certainly as beautiful. It would serve as an amazing playground
for experimentation, but often a garden that looks like this is difficult
to achieve in a school setting for, uh, for a lot of reasons, right? But if you can build a natural space
like this, I highly recommend it. Now one, one effective method for
building an educational garden. And the one that I always recommended,
and I alluded to it earlier, is the square foot garden method. This approach is super adaptable. It’s really simple to set
up, and it makes gardening accessible in really any location. Right? I talked to you about my, my, uh,
parking lot, uh, uh, case study, right? It’s ideal for schools that have limited
space because it utilizes small areas to really grow a diverse array of plants. Okay? So it maximizes literally
every square inch in a space. So it’s beautiful. For those of you who are in urban
environments, especially now, I still use this method, this
layout in all of my garden beds. Uh, at least my kitchen garden beds. The one closer to home. The ones that are the more
intensive garden beds that I wanna cultivate more closely. I wanna maximize my space. So a square foot layout, even if you have
a circular garden, is still super helpful. Just as a general rule, now, the garden,
using, using this method, the garden, you can easily, uh, divide it into manageable
squares, which obviously simplifies management and education and division. It allows you to, uh, uh, or
students rather, to learn about various plants and their needs,
while also maximizing limited space. So for me, uh, it’s not the
ultimate form of gardening. It’s not the most biodiverse, it’s not the
most productive necessarily, but I think it’s perfect for schools that are looking
to implement a garden program without, uh, extensive land resources, right? This is what it looks like
building it is really simple. Essentially, once the bed is construction
and filled with soil about at least 12 inches deep, if you’re on soil
already, you’re gonna use string or twine along with a staple gun to divide
the garden into individual square feet. Okay? And then, of course, be sure to have
the children participate in this, right? The building of the garden is
a workshop in and of itself. And so it’s very simple. And then using these garden
planning cards, right, you are going to know exactly, uh, and
these, I’m providing these to you. You’re gonna know exactly how many seeds
to place in each one of those square feet. And then, like I mentioned, each
student can really take ownership over, over one of these square feet. So where, where do you
put this thing, right? Um, so there’s a lot that I can talk
about, uh, in terms of microclimate, uh, solar exposure, albedo, heat
island effect, all of these things. But you know, it’s, it’s imperative
that you choose the right location. However, barring the perfect location,
please use whatever you have, even if it’s almost always shaded, I promise
you, there is something you can grow. There are a lot of deep, dark
leafy greens that, albeit they’ll grow a little bit slower, we’ll
still thrive in a shady location. Spinach, Swiss chard. These are, these are options as well. Okay? You don’t want to put fruiting
plants in a shady area. They’ll never go to fruit. But if you can look for a spot that gets
plenty of sunlight, Eastern sun is the best morning, sun is always the best. Western sun in the middle of the
summer, we’ll cook your garden and make it require more watering. So if you can shelter it from the Western
Sun and get mostly a southeast exposure, sure, that’s the goldilock zone for sure. You wanna avoid a north facing wall or,
or a straight west facing wall unless you’re growing things like rosemary,
tomatoes, Mediterranean plants that are, that can stand being dried out and
have a lot of sun beating down on them. Okay? Ideally, you’re placing your,
um, garden close to water, right? This is kind of an important factor. The best is rainwater. But if all you have is a
hose, that’s totally fine. Um, don’t go into a place that’s
prone to water logging, right? So if it’s a very low area and you’re
noticing a lot of kind of stompy water in the ground after it rains, it doesn’t
dry too much or it dries out way too fast and cracks, um, you wanna kind
of avoid those places or try to amend them in whatever way that you can. You wanna place your garden, if
possible, away from busy roads to minimize pollution exposure, right? And to ensure safety for
your students, of course. And then you wanna really consider
your surrounding environment, right? Event, avoid really dense tree
areas so that you’re minimizing nutrient competition, um, and
potential wildlife disturbances. Now I talk about edge and biodiversity. So. Uh, be reasonable with this. We’re not looking to
chop all the trees down. We still wanna view the
ecosystem as a whole. And then as it pertains to
building the garden, right? Obviously host a workshop. It’s a great opportunity to host
a garden building workshop where, you know, older students and parent
volunteers come together, right? Um, and I’ll, I’ll talk to you
about how to raise those, uh, build, actually build the beds in a second. But when it comes to actual garden
beds, raised garden beds with with wood, you wanna try and aim to
start a, a good place to start. So, if you’re looking for specifics,
and this is gonna depend on your context, but if you wanna aim for
specifics, start by three raised beds. Right? Three raised beds is, is a great place to
start for two or three classrooms, right? Each classroom can have its own garden
bed, uh, or you can just have more for one class, whatever, whatever your situation
is, and go, uh, three by eight feet. So three feet is a great width because
every student can reach a foot and a half into the center from either
side and about a foot high if you’re starting with a grass grassy area. Now, if you have like, hard, uh,
pavement or some sort of kind of impermeable or like really not nice
soil underneath, aim for twice as high. Go at least two feet. You can go up to four feet tall,
then you’re getting a little bit tall for some of the younger kids. Um, and of course you’re
gonna require more fill. Uh, and a trick for that is to
use, you know, rotting logs and things to put it at the bottom. But, um, the best case scenario
is, uh, to really delay cardboard. Uh, and I’ll show you a
picture of that in a moment. To lay cardboard at the base on the inside
to really soak that cardboard to choke out any weeds and to invite words in. And then filling that with, you know,
soil that is rich in organic matter. Uh, and then you’re gonna assign each
bed to different groups for the season. Now, for materials, I’ll talk
about that here in a moment. You wanna use, um, cedar or other
rot resistant lumber right now. You use what you have access to. Just the, the lifespan of your
garden will depend on the material that you use for the wood, ’cause
it’s gonna get wet, obviously. Uh, and then the schools that you’re
working with, um, should probably provide essential tools like wheelbarrows,
shovels, watering cans, right? And then involves students in the building
process, which as I mentioned, is, uh, an educational experience in and of itself. So it looks something like this. Very simple. Um, these are just, uh, pieces of wood
stacked on top of each other, uh, two by fours, or sometimes two by sixes, right? So if you’re doing it 12 inches tall,
you’re gonna use two, two by sixes. You’re gonna stack those
on top of each other. And you’re gonna use some
simple corner brackets here. So we build the first layer, we install
the corner brackets, we attach ’em with some screws on the ends as well. And then we build the second
layer and we attach the top part of the bracket to that. And you have a completed bed,
you should be able to lift that. It’ll be quite heavy. Um, put it wherever you need it to be. Ensure that it’s square
and you’re good to go. So this is just an image of me working
with some students in, in one of our, um, one of our workshops here. Now, I’m not gonna give you specific
costs because you, you know, I, I’ve, I’ve been doing this, um, for years and
costs go up and they vary by location. Um, but I’ll give you some general tips. And they’re listed here. So you, if you can try to get some locally
milled lumber, um, unplanned is great. You don’t need, you know,
perfectly smooth lumber for this. Certainly avoid treated lumber. I know it’s not gonna rot, but it
contains, uh, substances that are really poisonous for the soil and
you really don’t wanna, um, uh, you know, pollute your soil with, with
the oils that they put on there. Uh, or some rough cut lumber. That’s great. You know, even rough cut pine,
it’ll, it’ll rot after a couple of years, but if that’s what you have
access to, as long as it’s thick enough, it should work just fine. And then you can replace it later. Um, soil and delivery. So, you know, it’s a way to cut cost if
you can transport, get your own soil. Um, where I’m from, we had access to free
compost from the municipal, uh, landfill. It wasn’t the best
quality, but it was free. So we would go and, and, and acquire that. Um, oftentimes, you know,
compost providers will donate in exchange for some recognition. So, uh, if you have a teacher or a, a
parent volunteer, somebody that has a pickup truck, um, they, or a trailer,
you know, I’m sure they already know this ’cause they’re asked to move
things all the time, but, and Matt knows this, uh, but, uh, the, the, you know,
they’re a valuable resource of course. Uh, and then weed barrier and hardware. That’s something that you
might spend a bit of money on. Uh, you don’t need weed barrier. But, um, if, if you’d like to use
geotextile, if you’re, if you’re, you know, really wanna ensure that you have
some weed prevention ’cause you can’t maintain it very much, you can do that. I usually try to avoid it and just plant
densely and let that form the cover that avoids weeds, um, altogether and hardware
with which the brackets and the screws. Now, if you really wanna save
costs, this is a garden bed that I created out of milled hemlock slabs. These are, you know, pieces
of hemlock from a mill. It’s essentially a waste
product for these folks. Uh, and this is not, you know, a beautiful
piece of architecture, but it works. It’s four corners together. You can build your garden this way, fill
it with soil, and it’ll be sturdy enough and it’ll last a heck of a long time. So if you’re okay with that natural
look, uh, kids peeling bark as it slowly peels off the wood,
you know, that sort of thing. This is an excellent example of a
cost-effective garden construction. This is called lasagna gardening. I spoke, I spoke to this
a little bit already. This is my beautiful daughter, Cheyenne. She’s a lot bigger than that now. Um, and uh, essentially it’s just
putting layers of cardboard and soaking it, uh, really soaking it before you
put your compost and stuff on top. So you would put this at the base
of your garden bed right at the base here, and you would soak that. Very good. Okay, so let’s just wrap this up,
uh, by talking about how to adapt your program for other contexts. Again, my beautiful daughter, Cheyenne,
here on the left with her little hat. She’s much, much bigger than that. But this is by, by the way, just
to double click on this image. This is a, a, an event, a public garden. A public food garden that we planted
in a little median strip in front of a fire station in downtown, right? A very public space. People walking by there all the time. There’s a sign that said free food. And we were hosting educational
events there, um, throughout the year. So after school programs, is
there a fantastic opportunity to extend the impact of your garden
beyond regular school hours? Right? You can provide these, provide, you
know, relaxed, informal settings where students can continue to engage with
the garden and, you know, a little bit of flexibility for afterschool sessions
allows for some variety of activities that might not fit into the regular school day. And gardening might just be a
welcome, a welcome component of that. So there’s some, some key points here that
I’ll skip over, uh, for the sake of time. So, as I mentioned earlier, I worked
a lot with the Boys and Girls Club. Um, this is a, a, you know, publicly
available photo, which is why I felt comfortable, uh, posting it. Usually I don’t like to, uh, post photos
of students or children that I work with without permission, of course. But this was a newspaper clipping. So, uh, these, this is an
educational garden that we built, the Boys and Girls Club. This was an afterschool
program that we worked on. The kids looked forward to getting
off the bus after school and engaging with the garden to see what was
growing and how it was performing. Uh, many of the kids actually
rushed over to the garden in order to see how it was going every day. Preschool programs are great. Um, I worked a little bit with
preschool programs, but younger kids, um, uh, love this sort of thing. Now there’s a couple considerations. Safety, right? We wanna use, uh, safe tools. We want to use non-toxic plants. Um, tomato leaves, for example. I mean, most children know
intuitively they won’t put it in their mouths ’cause it has a smell. If they taste it, it’ll be very bitter. They’ll spit it out. But, um, just, you know, being wary
of the types of plans that exist, whether they’re thorny or not. Um, we want a lot of, this is
where a tactile play has, uh, a lot of, um, benefit, right? Children touching seeds. Um, oftentimes I would conduct
workshops for kindergartners and preschoolers and things, and it would
just be about manipulating the seeds and feeling the difference between a
beet seed and a spinach seed, which has all these little spikes on it. And, um, why is the seed bigger? I wonder and feel the soil and
feel this plant and feel this leaf. Which one feels harder? Which one is easier to rip? And all of these little pieces,
these, these tactile observations are, uh, incredibly beautiful. And really, the garden is a, a wonderful
place to play, which is, which makes it great for preschool programs and
daycares on summer camps give you an extended timeframe for, you know,
delving deeper into gardening projects. These can be pretty impactful if you
combine educational activities with the fun and freedom of summer, right? Just make gardening part
of the summer experience. So there’s some examples there
that you can look into and. You can get watermelons out
of it, which is pretty cool. Uh, church groups, right? So church groups are great
partners for your garden program. They give you the space to link gardening
with your spiritual and community values, exchanging that spiritual and
cultural capital and social capital. Uh, oftentimes churches are hubs of
community, so they are great places. Uh, church grounds are great places
for, uh, community garden programs. Um, you know, if you bring your,
your children to church, it would be a great place to host, uh,
events as well in the garden, right? And the market garden context. So if you’re a market gardener by
chance, or somebody who runs a farm, or you’re somebody who’s interested
in doing that, whether you’re an urban farmer or not, um, you might adapt the
market garden, uh, or the educational garden program for the market garden. We did this at one high school where the
agricultural program is a rural school. They wanted to learn, you know,
small scale market gardening. And so we built an educational
garden program that resembled a hyper efficient market garden. Um, so they could simulate small
scale farming, but also teach elements of the curriculum while doing so. And it might look something like this. It’s not a standardized rose. Um, still a lot of diversity, but,
um, you know, a lot of deep mulch. That’s what you’re seeing
here that conserves moisture. But still, you know, you can calculate
how many tomatoes you might get. You can calculate how much
carrots you might get. Homeschool cooperatives,
you know, same thing. Um, I am a homeschooler. A lot of times we want to collaborate
with other homeschool families. Uh, and the benefit of homeschooling
is that you’re at home. So you can do stuff like this, right? You can, this is, uh, this is me and
my family, you know, creating a meal out of what came out of the garden. And you can do other
things like make bread. You can start seeds in your window sill
and you can really incorporate, um, uh, gardening into your family life, right? Community garden programs. I spoke about this already as well. I did a lot of work with social
housing programs, community garden programs, teaching children in community
garden programs, how to grow food. So I already spoke to that as well. And there’s me doing the same thing,
farm and homestead field trips. I spoke to that. Bringing students out to, uh,
farms and homesteads in order to observe what gardening might
look like at a larger scale. Uh, this is Farmer Brian, who
was a berry farmer, and he hosted students that we brought out to,
to his farm, uh, more than once. And, uh, there was a lot of reciprocity
there because he had a few extra hands on deck for a day, and they
got to participate with a lot of tactile, experiential learning. And of course, um, there’s, you know,
a wonderful opportunity to observe nature in these systems as well. So, you know, we’ve explored essential
steps for initiating and adopting your educational garden program. We talked about building the
physical garden space to raise funds. Um, I’d like to think you now have
the tools and strategies to create a resilient and impactful garden
program, but of course, this is just the start and I wanna be wary. We’re at the end here, but I just
want to conclude by, um, the, you know, this entire session by saying,
uh, I guess, I guess I wanna leave you at a bit with a bit of a message
of, of inspiration and encouragement, if you will, if you’ll allow me to. So, you know, I’m hoping in the last
couple of hours you’ve learned a lot about, you know, building and
sustaining an educational garden, right? And now I just wanna emphasize that
it’s time to put these lessons into action because there’s no point in
me delivering this, uh, educational program if we’re not doing that. Now, if you’re serious about this,
and if you stay till the end, I have to assume that you are, know that the
work that you’re about to undertake is incredibly important, okay? So by creating an educational
garden, you’re not just planting seeds in the soil, right? You’re, you’re planting seeds in the
hearts and minds of the next generation. And these gardens, and I’ve seen it,
are where young people learn about the natural world, where they develop a deep
connection to the earth, where they, gosh, where they begin to understand
their role as stewards of our planet. Right now, imagine the impact of
a child discovering the joy of, you know, growing their own food,
understanding the cycles of nature, feeling the pride of nurturing life
from a tiny seed to this thriving plant. You know, I can tell you
firsthand that these experiences are absolutely transformative. They inspire curiosity, they foster
responsibility, and they cultivate a lifelong love for learning in nature. So, education is a lot of things,
but it’s intended to be a powerful catalyst for change, right? So through your garden program,
you really have the opportunity to inspire, to educate the next
generation of land stewards, right? You’re empowering them with the, with the
knowledge and skills that they need to care for our planet, to take agency over
their own wellbeing and to contribute to a healthier, more resilient world. You know, every lesson you teach, every
plant you grow, every child that you inspire, brings us one step closer to
a better future, a future where our communities are connected through a
shared love of nature, where regenerative practices are the norm, not the exception,
where every individual understands the importance of their role in stewarding the
ecosystems in which they find themselves. So my hope for you is that you take
what you’ve learned here and you bring it to life in your garden, right? Engage your students, involve your
community, and gosh, let your passion for education and nature shine
through and everything that you do. Your efforts are gonna
create a ripple effect. They’re gonna inspire others and
build a movement that extends far beyond the garden gates. So yeah, I just wanna say thank
you for your dedication to this important work together. I’m confident that we can inspire the next
generation of land stewards and create a brighter, more resilient future for all. So happy gardening. And remember, the garden is more
than just a place to grow plants. It’s a place to grow, mines to
build community, and to make the world a darn better place. I’ll leave it at that. Ooh, that’s a cool background. Chicago. Well said, brother. Yeah, I found that as you were
speaking, it looks like the timer’s still going though. We’ll have to figure that one out. Anyway, well done. And um, I just, I can’t believe how
you articulate these things so well, like with, with the imagery and
just your experiences and it, it all really came together nicely for a, a
holistic picture from my perspective. So, well, well executed
and well done, brother. That was inspirational, to say the least. Thanks Matt. And as promised folks, we can actually
get to all your questions if you’re, we’re gonna go over here, obviously
we’re going over, but you can stick around for just a couple more minutes. We’ll. Fulfill our promise of
answering all the questions. Um, some of these are more
comments than anything. So, uh, I love the idea of a school garden
produce in the cafeteria, but I’m not sure where I would even start with that. Yeah. Speak to your administration. Oftentimes schools have partnerships and
contracts with, um, well, I’m gonna let expose my bias here, but degenerative,
um, kind of cafeteria agencies, third parties who bring in really not good foods
and cook in really not good seed oils. Right. So that’s, I I I’m not gonna take
away from the fact that that’s, uh, a very, very much an uphill battle. Um, but if you’re anything like
me, that’s not gonna stop you. Yeah. Uh, that school garden
giveaway was lovely. I totally agree with that. That was nice. Mm-hmm. I like that part too. Lead us love. Yeah, absolutely. So that was all the questions
for part three and then part four, we had three left. Um, the first one was, can I come
live with Sean in the wild garden? Yeah, absolutely. I want to join you. Looks like the Garden of Eden, they said. Yep. I agree. Uh, we’ll all go move there. Yeah. Such a nice garden though. Mm-hmm. Uh, is it okay to use pressure
treated lumber for the beds? You answered that and the answer was no. Don’t do it. Do not, don’t do it. Use untreated rough cut lumber,
I think you said, right? Or snaps. Nope, hardwood. So where possible? Right. Uh, oak is often better used for a table. Walnut is often better used for
a shelf, but those are great. Uh, black locust is often
is kind of an exception. It’s like a hard softwood
lasts for a very long time. Cedar is the best. Um, you can get away with spruce
or pine, but it’ll rot faster. You’ll have to replace the boards. Okay. Yeah, that was all of our questions. And then I just had one
note here that Yeah. I saw a Mper sticker one time
on a truck that said, sorry, I’m helping someone move. I saw That was hilarious. Sorry. I’m busy helping someone move. Yeah, of course you are. That’s good. Yeah, yeah, no, so
that, uh, that’ll do it. Al, any closing remarks
or final words for us? No, I think I had them already. Um, I just wanna thank
everybody for joining this live. I know it was an intimate session,
but, um, I’m always grateful to see that the passion that we, uh,
that we have collectively, not just for gardening our environment, but
at the core for our youth, right. For our children, for the next generation. And that’s at the end what
this work is all about. We heal the land for them,
not just for ourselves. So, uh, thank you for
being champions of that. Whoever you are, if you’re listening
to this as a recording, as I have infinite gratitude for you. Well said. And on that note, um, I just
wanna thank you, Al, for your. Awesome presentation. I can’t even put words to it. I’m kind of speechless to be honest,
but it’s, it’s left a, a good impact on me and I’m sure with a
lot of people that are watching. So thank you for that. It was incredible. It’s been an incredible evening, really. And, uh, thank you everybody for your
participation and all your engagement, your great questions, fantastic questions. I might, I might add, um, we’ll
get, uh, that, all that stuff out to you within 24 hours. So the recording link, the slide deck
and al’s complete digital toolkit. So you’ll have all of the, um, the
planning guides, the 50 plus, I think it was lesson plans and funding
resources and all kinds of stuff. So everything you need to start your
2024, uh, school garden journey. So, and 2026, what did I say? 24, 2000, 25, 26. 27 20 into the future. Yes. So, and a big thanks also
to, um, our sponsors today. Rapid Course Company Learn Regen, nipple
Growth Productions and Replay kit for, for sponsoring tonight tonight’s event. So thank you very much for that. And uh, again, to the audience for
attending and all your awesome questions. So if anybody’d like some additional
information here, we’ve got our contact email up on the screen. So if you’re interested in any of our
services, please reach out info at Maple Grove Tech and we can direct your
inquiry to wherever it needs to go. And that’ll do it folks. That’s uh, that’s a wrap. Thanks again for, uh, for joining us
tonight and, uh, happy gardening in 2025. Thanks everyone. Three six. Thanks Matt. You’re a great al, great producer there. Appreciate that. Um, happy to help. You did the magic. Cheers. Take care.