Students and families of Spruceland Community School in Prince George need access to healthy food not only during the school year, but during summer break. Rotary Club of Prince George Yellowhead with $5,000 and $5,000 from The Rotary Foundation through a District Grant supported development of a school community garden that is providing opportunity for the healthful impacts that food literacy teaching and learning can have on student mental and physical health and school-community relationship building.
The garden has created a school-wide project where all classes will have a shared objective of creating and caring for the living ecosystem and celebrating in the harvest that provides food for the meals served.
The school community garden project included building garden planters, developing garden beds, planting fruit trees and establishing a sustainable food supply for the students and school community. The students are harvesting seeds and holding annual plant sales to cover the operational costs of the program. They will be using the program to foster relationships with local farmers, culinary artists, gardeners, and our community neighbourhood.
Garden workshops about seed harvesting and preservation are key components of the project. Project leaders have also been working with the Indigenous Education Department of Spruceland Community School to increase education around how to cook traditional foods, such as smoking fish, making Bannock, and how medicinal plants and their uses can benefit us.
Year round access to fresh herbs and greens will come with an indoor growing system to be used during our long winters. In late Winter/early Spring this indoor system is also being used to start seedlings indoors to be sold at a plant sale. Annual plant sales will be implemented to help support annual operating costs.
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