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Westwood Elementary School Garden Project.
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Background Information: In the winter of 2006, Westwood had a wooden adventure playground in a desolate field. To understand how far our project has come over the last twenty-four months, you must see the first phase of our garden. We’d like to show you where we began with our first Evergreen grant three years ago.
Although our Garden Club edged over two hundred feet of scrubby grass away from the fence line, we needed volunteers with machines to help with heavy duty jobs. Walk-behind Bobcats helped us dig deep holes for our big trees and began digging the stream. The hyab crane delivered our trees for planting. Our twenty foot tall tamarack tree had a two hundred pound root ball! We could have never planted it without mechanical help. Because it was impossible for students to remove the grass, we hired a bobcat to do it for us.
A spectacular part of our garden is the path of large stepping stones. Each class designed their own unique stepping stone out of tiles, stained glass chunks, and other miscellaneous objects. Our wooden frames were staked onto was poured into forms. When they were cured, the Grade Seven class used scissors to clean the excess cement off the tiles and glass. Thirty yards of gravel were donated to the school by a local contracting company. We used the gravel for making a hill and forming the stream. Students shovelled and raked the gravel to create the contours needed for the stream to drain down to our tamarack tree which needs lots of water.
Trenches were dug and cardboard forms were set in the trenches to prepare for pouring the hypertufa. Home Depot staff helped us mix and pour the hypertufa curbing. The names of our sponsors and the Garden Club members were stamped on the top of the hypertufa walls.
One of our volunteers concreted the stones for the portions of our stream that would be under the bridges. The rest of the stream would be finished next spring. Our School District carpenter helped build our two sturdy wooden bridges. The bridges look a bit odd as our stream bed has barely been started!
Our hardworking students mulched to help make our garden more water-retentive. All of our garden beds were first layered with newspapers and then covered with mulch. We hope to have very few weeds to deal with! All students in our school helped with the planting. The prairie garden received its plants on the last day of school!
The Prairie Garden has really grown over the summer! The fall of 2007 signalled the end of Phase I. The plants have filled in, limestone was put around the stepping stones, and the adventure playground was removed.
In early spring of 2007, the dirt ditch, (the future collection stream) did its job of collecting melting snow. The ditch was dug last fall and had to be dug again this spring because the water caused the sides to slough. Some of the primary children waded into the steam because they had forgotten how deep the it was! They got wet up to their waists!
During the winter months, the school prepared to participate in the Stream of Dreams project. Every class except for kindergarten, put two coats of primer on their wooden fish. The two Stream of Dreams instructors arrived in late April. We participated in hydrology lessons in our classrooms, and then painted designs on our fish. Parents mounted our 473 finished fish to create the Stream of Dreams mural in the front of our garden. Sponsor signs were posted at the beginning of our fish mural.
Held in late May, the “Cement Event” was a very busy day! For an hour, before the cement truck arrived, students packed rocks from inside the school to beside our stream and granite path. The rocks were washed before they were inserted into the concrete. Our arms ached from of all of the lifting. At the end of the day, the twenty-four stepping stones were poured, the spiral granite path and steps were finished, and the stones in the stream were concreted in place.
Our School District Maintenance Crew installed three new donated benches into our new garden. We decorated the concrete slabs with tile and stamped words into some. One of the benches was dedicated to our retiring secretary, who had worked at Westwood for twenty-five years. Another bench honoured the Garden Club members by stamping their names into the wet concrete. The spiral granite path was finished during our Cement Event.
Again this year, each class created a large stepping stone. Adult volunteers and some students pushed tiles into the concrete to make sure that they would stay in place. The Garden Club created a set of stepping stones highlighting the trees and flowers found in the garden. The common, Latin and Carrier Nation names of each tree and flower were stamped into the wet concrete.
It is hard to believe that our beautiful collection stream was only a ditch in the ground! The stones were concreted in place to create both the stream bed and garden beds during the Cement Event. Even our principal spent time placing rocks into the stream! The newly-planted flower border looked very plain until the plants grew and filled in over the summer. By the next fall, the flowers had filled in the border of the stream making it a beautiful spot. It is great to sail boats down after it rains, too!
The primary students worked hard for most of the spring putting mulch onto our garden to help the beds retain moisture over the summer. Our mountain of hog fuel mulch, donated by Canfor, disappeared bucket after bucket onto the garden beds.
The newly planted trees form the backbone of our garden. Everything for the season is complete except for spreading limestone on the path. A violent hail storm on June 29, 2007, luckily didn’t damage the newly planted items.
Phase III Aboriginal Garden2007-2008 The Aboriginal Garden is located in the southeast corner of our school grounds across the field from our first garden. It was a barren, unused area covered with scrubby grass and weeds. We researched the plants and Aboriginal culture for this garden for two years before deciding on our garden design.
Our Aboriginal Garden took five weeks to complete from staking out to planting. The trenching work had to be done by adults due to School Board regulations. The site was first measured and marked with stakes to create the shape. The outer edge was spray painted and then the trench work was done by hand. The North-South and East- West axis were strung for accurate placement before the inner circle was measured and dug.
Meanwhile in the original garden, the Garden Club deepened the pond at the end of the collection stream. A flat slate rock was put into place at the end of the stream to create a small waterfall. Student helpers tried their hand at mixing concrete in a wheelbarrow. Early in June, the Garden Club members planted and watered donated perennials beside the collection stream and on the sedum hill.
Many members of the community helped us with our project. Our local golf course superintendent used the sod cutter to remove the weedy grass from garden area. Other helpers used a trenching machine and a pick axe to loosen the rocky soil in the trenches! Our students packed a lot of rocks to the school dumpster to keep the site clean!
One weekend, adult volunteers dug all the trenches in the rocky soil. All the soil that came out was screened to remove large rocks. The large rocks were packed to the dumpster. Many students and parents dropped in during the two days to help with the screening and rock removal.
Each stepping stone featured one of the cardinal directions (North, South, East, or West) as well as an animal important to the Aboriginal nations. The stones have images of a caribou, a frog, a beaver and a bear. While the trenches were being dug outside, several staff and students were busy in the library working on the central medicine wheel and the four large entrance stepping stones.
Student and adult volunteers built the forms for the concrete walls. The next day, two volunteer adults put the rebar in the forms to ensure that our garden walls would be standing for years to come.
The morning of the Cement Event 2008, the forms were staked out on the ground ready for the concrete. It took eight students to carry the heavy stepping stones to the garden site! Our great School Board employees smoothed the walls and laid the four entrance stepping stones and the central tiled medicine wheel tile. The stained glass hopscotch in the original garden was also poured. Our primary kids thought the boom truck was cool!
The plant pots were laid in their chosen spots so that the garden design was maintained. Every student in school planted at least one plant! The intermediate and primary students paired up to ensure a successful start for each plant. It’s hard to believe that all the plants for the Aboriginal Garden fit in the back of a Jeep! All of the plants chosen for the garden are native species which have importance to the Aboriginal nations.
On the last day of school, our four picnic tables were delivered. The picnic tables were bolted to the concrete and tile pads by the School District workers. Next spring, we will be able to have classes outside! Doesn’t the garden look magical?
Our garden project is still in progress. Since we live in the north, our garden project will continue in the spring. We thought you might like to see what we have planned for this school year.
Every year, the students do a fall clean up and plant trees. The plants were cut down and the leaves cleaned up. Groups of Grade Sevens planted green ash trees along the fence. We had to carry the heavy trees to their planting spot, dig a hole, fill it with water, put the tree in the hole, cover the roots with dirt, and water it again. The trees were staked to keep them straight.
Our first spring project in April will be the Stream of Dreams. Even though it’s snowy outside, our project has started because we can prime the wooden fish indoors. Vandalized fish were drilled in preparation for reattaching them to the fence when the snow disappears. We are looking forward to our hydrology lesson and painting fish to beautify our fence! We can’t wait to see the fish stretch across our whole fence! There will be more than 800 colourful fish once the project is finished.
In May, the planning for our class stepping stones begins. Once we have chosen our picture, we will draw it on a large piece of cardboard. We will pick out the tiles and stained glass that we want to use. Once the design is finished, the tiles and glass are covered with a sticky plastic to hold them in place until the concrete is poured. They are carried to their new site, the cardboard is slid out from under the pattern and the tiles are pushed into the wet concrete. Once the concrete has dried for a few days, we take off the plastic to reveal the stepping stone. The new stepping stones will form a path beside the Wave Rider connecting one side of the garden to the other.
In preparation for planting, we need to remove gravel from the old adventure playground site and add dirt. We also have to add plastic garden edging to form an outside border. We will be planting an Autumn Flame Maple on one side and a paper birch on the other to provide shade for the three game tables. The three square game tables will have four seats around them. Two of the tables will have Checkers/Chess boards on the top, and one will have Snakes and Ladders painted on it.
We are planting three clumps of paper birches to shade the south side of the school. Nine clumps of hair grass will be planted to run parallel to the path. It will make a soft border.
This winter, a local nursery and the local jail are growing plants for our garden. By the end of this school year, we will have planted 48 trees, 144 shrubs, 431 wildflowers, and 90 grass clumps. Isn’t that a lot? We look forward to bringing our children here to play!
We are proud of Westwood’s beautiful garden! PowerPoint Presentation by Grade Seven students: Jordan C., Ashley E., Carly F., Melanie H., Edmond L., Braeden R., Jesse R., and Chloe Z.
