We have partnered with several local groups to provide communities throughout the Durham Region with an edible garden. Building and outreach will continue over the next several years.
Our community partners:
- DDSB
- DR Local Housing
- Non-profit Housing
- DRNPHC
- Town of Whitby
- City of Pickering
- Whitby Sunrise Rotary, Ajax Rotary, and Oshawa Rotary
- COVANTA
- DCDSB
Schools
Our team helps schools plan and build the gardens alongside a garden maintenance team from the school and community.
We Grow Food offers training on:
- Garden mapping
- Plant identification including perennial versus annuals
- Weeding
- Trellising
- Pruning
- Watering
- Harvesting techniques and tracking amount of food grown & harvested
- Directing the sharing of the harvest
- Seed saving
- Closing and opening of the garden
- Making the edible garden a sustainable school program
- Succession planting
The garden maintenance team should be a group made up of students, teachers, and parents that
are committed to learning and caring for the edible garden installed at the school.
Students at the schools help to build raised garden beds, fill them with soil, and plant edible crops. The beds are then labelled to help with identification. Students learn how to properly care for and maintain the garden.
Success
One of the measurements of success was demonstrated instantly, as students involved in the project brought their friends over throughout lunch and recesses to look at the work they had done. At the end of the day, parents picking up their children popped by to share their enthusiasm for the project. Many families also signed up to help with the garden care.
Every school reported back about the harvests that they got from their gardens. Many made classroom salads, others bagged up the food and handed it out along with pantry items to students and families, and some schools shared their harvest with local seniors residences.
Summer Maintenance
Each school has a different and unique way of handling summer maintenance when classes are out. One school had families register to commit to garden care for a week or two at a time over the summer months. Another school has a daycare that runs over the summer, and they offered to take care of the garden. At a different school, a neighbour that lives close said that they would take care of the garden and donate the produce.
Communities are coming together to help with the garden maintenance and harvest.
In 2022/2023 the Edible Garden Project:
- Built 43 gardens
- Replanted the 7 gardens originally built the previous year
- Impacted more than 4 375 students and 308 non-profit housing family units
2024 will add an estimated 27 more locations!
2022/2023 Edible Garden Builds
| Pickering High School (DDSB) | Da Vinci PS (DDSB Ajax) |
| Highbush Village (Pickering) | Waverly PS (DDSB,) & GREENHOUSE |
| Ajax High School (Ajax) | Coronation PS (DDSB, Oshawa) |
| West Lynde PS (Whitby) | Lakeview Neighbourhood (Oshawa) |
| Wood Crest (Oshawa) | Harwood Manor (Ajax) |
| McCatskills Mills (Cannington) | Beatrice Woods (Oshawa) |
| Brock High School (Cannington) | Wilson Village (Oshawa) |
| Dr Robert Thornton (Oshawa) | Orchard Park ( Pickering) |
| Lydia Trulls (Courtice) | Marigold Village (Whitby) |
| 850 Green St (Whitby) | Fairport PS (DDSB, Pickering) |
| Olive Ave Micro Homes (DRLocal Housing) | College Hill PS (DDSB, Oshawa) |
| 385 Beatrice (DR Local Housing) | Stephen G Seywell (DDSB, Oshawa) |
| 2&4 Nelson St (Bowmanville) | Glen St PS (DDSB, Oshawa) |
| Clara Hughes PS (DDSB) | Kedron PS (DDSB, Oshawa) |
| Frenchman’s Bay PS (DDSB, Pickering) | Robert Munsch PS (DDSB, Whitby) |
| Willow Walk PS (DDSB) | Gandatsetiagon PS (DDSB) |
| Walter Harris PS (DDSB) | Bolton C Falby PS (DDSB) |
| ForestView PS (DDSB) | Alexander Graham Bell (DDSB) |
| Blair Ridge PS (DDSB) | Sir William Stephens (DDSB) |
| Carruthers PS (DDSB) | Meadowcrest PS (DDSB) |
| Colonel Fairwell PS (DDSB) | St Mary’s High School (DCDSB) |
| St Isaac Jocques |
We Grow Food 