Castlebridge Public School

The Castlebridge Public School Gardening Project will provide meaningful, hands-on support for teachers, students and community members to realize the impact of growing fresh food. The school-wide gardening and outdoor classroom initiative in 2014, will build on the planning and learning undertaken by the school staff through the Ecosource-York University Sustainability Education program in 2012/2013.

We plan to build an outdoor learning garden with rock seating (for 30 students), native trees and shrubs. We also plan to build 3-raised beds in which to grow vegetables and herbs.

With our grant, we plan to undertake the following activities:

Further development of in-class self watering planter boxes, and growing lights for classrooms in the early spring for students to start seeds and care for seedlings. We have 6 of these already and would like to build at least 6 more with the help of the Whole Kids grant.

Student and community planting days to build the raised garden beds out of cedar. We would fill these raised beds with soil where students will plant vegetable seedlings in the garden areas in the spring. Harvesting of the vegetables and herbs will take place for the students during the school year, and by the larger community during the summer months.

As we continue to establish our vegetable garden, a more long-term goal is to harvest enough vegetables and herbs that we can sell to the school community, which in turn will assist us with our annual maintenance budget.