Students and staff at Bradford District High School (BDHS) have begun building and planting a new community garden and classroom.
It was an idea that kept growing and that’s exactly what the garden is intended to do.
“It’s an opportunity for learning and growing and understanding, getting back to the essentials, the grass roots, farming and that’s what Bradford is, we’re a farming community,” says teacher Jon Sweeny.
The new community garden at BDHS is an outdoor classroom, allowing students to expand the school’s greenhouse which was created three years ago.
“You get to see the actual development of the plants from the greenhouse where we make the pots to plant them and then we come out here to see them grow,” says grade 12 student Makayla Falls.
The community garden has been named ‘Food for Thought’, motivating more than 100 students in programs like hospitality, biology, business and carpentry to participate.
Bradford Greenhouses supplied the soil and Timber Mart donated the wood but the students did everything else, right down to the design.
There will be 19 garden boxes in total and six of them will be set aside for people in the community to grow their own produce.
“If we have excess food it will go to the Bradford Food Bank,” adds Sweeny.
Students will be selling plants from the greenhouse in just a few weeks and that money will be used to replenish supplies at the community garden, making sure this project sustains itself.
