The Spiderweb Food Garden
The Spiderweb Garden, our organic food garden, was started 6 years ago by parents Wanda Georgis and Edna Ruiz. Our Greening Committee, now 12 dedicated Withrow School parents, has the support of teachers, students, Care Taking staff, Principal and Vice- Principal.
For the past three years, we have employed Elin Marley as our Garden Educator. Mike Nevin, a Withrow neighbour and Compost Facilitator at Food Share, donates his time to compost for the school garden and community. In the summer we all pitch in to water, weed, and harvest. We have hired individuals in the past to help as needed.
We are recruiting parents and kids on an ongoing basis and try to publicize the value of the garden to the school and community.
Our Goals for the Spiderweb Garden are basic: to continue to offer a teaching garden, led by a Garden Educator who offers specialized knowledge of garden-based and environmental education to support teachers in creating and delivering hands-on learning opportunities linked to all subject areas in the Ontario curriculum.
A grant will help us to sustain the salary of our garden educator, Elin Marley. We want to contribute to teacher Tom Mandel’s interdisciplinary third grade class project to design and build raised garden boxes, to purchase a rain barrel, develop signage with students and, offer a small stipend to our compost expert.
Further, we would like to grow a Monarch Butterfly Habitat Way station to teach students about monarch migration and habitats, and how development and pesticides can influence wildlife.
We want the garden to become an active zone where we can grow organic and pesticide free food and see the cycles of weather, energy, and water first hand.