Senior Organic Gardeners Update: “Garden Showcase”

On June 8  the Dunning-Foubert School celebrated the first year of a great program and a small group from Senior Organic Gardeners [SOG] and the Retired Teachers of Ontario [RTO] participated to the event. The Orleans’ school signed up for a three year commitment called “The Food Insecurity Project” and staff and students, under the careful guidance of Brett, from Growing Up Organic [GUO], showcased their work and learning. Part of their project this year involved growing food, that will be donated, in outdoor raised bed gardens and in containers in their classrooms. They experimented with many different plants and with different ways of growing them, presenting the results of their experience to their school community. 

The SOG and RTO members that visited the Garden Showcase event, were welcomed very warmly and enjoyed visiting each classroom, talking with the students about their presentation’ stations, about solutions for food security in the future, about their plants and the different growing techniques and witnessing the great enthusiasm each student showed while talking about the experience. Many of the lockers in the school halls had been decorated on the theme and it was much fun to admire the beautiful and creative artworks of the children. 

Grade 7 and 8 students were present outside among the raised bed gardens along the front of the school. In groups of three, they were presenting their experiments and projects relating to plant growth and worms’ composting.

Twinning the GUO program with the Food Security Project was a brilliant and inspiring initiative and many of the visitors, parents, students and  some  members of the COG-OSO Steering Committee, were genuinely impressed by the success of the project. This SOG outing was organized by Maragret Tourond-Townson to recognize and thank the RTOERO Foundation for their generous grant of $15,000 and to invite RTO members in our programming. 

Congratulations to the Dunning-Foubert School students for their well-developed sense of empathy and their creative ways to express and show solutions to help solve different issues related to food insecurity.

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SOG is grateful to The Ottawa Community Foundation for funding the creation of our new website:  https://seniororganicgardeners.ca/