Revelstoke Local Food Initiative gardening program connects kids with seniors at Mt. Cartier Court

By Jesse Johnston-Hill/Local Food Initiative

In 2016 the Revelstoke Local Food Initiative Society (LFI), launched a pilot project to explore the potential for gardens to be used as a tool to foster intergenerational connections between kids and seniors. The Garden Partnership Project engages grade 4 students from Arrow Heights Elementary and the residents who live at Mt. Cartier Court Extended Care Facility located beside Queen Victoria Hospital.

The Garden Partnership Project connects Arrow Heights Elementary students with Mt. Cartier Court Extended Care Facility residents to garden together. Photo: Keri Knapp/Local Food Initiative

The Garden Partnership builds on themes that the Local Food Initiative has been teaching through their Farm to Table Program (F2T) for years in elementary classrooms. F2T is a lesson series that introduces nine-year-old students to the global food system, sustainable and industrial agriculture, seasonal and less environmentally impactful foods, consumer decision making and climate change. It’s a packed curriculum for two classroom lessons and two field trips, and the kids finish the final class with the knowledge and skills to navigate a grocery store as empowered consumers who have the ability to make better food choices on their own and hopefully choose to make a difference — be it for the local farmers, the environment, or their health. Teachers continue to request to have the Farm to Table Program return to their classrooms. It is designed to complement learning outcomes across school subjects.

The Garden Partnership Project connects Arrow Heights Elementary students with Mt. Cartier Court Extended Care Facility residents to garden together. Photo: Keri Knapp/Local Food Initiative

The Garden Partnership Program is much longer, lasting the entire growing season and takes place almost entirely off-campus at the care-facility. It is experiential learning at its best. Amber Thompson’s grade 4 class began planning their gardens in March 2016 and as grade 5’s put their gardens to bed and saved seeds into October 2016. Amber and Jesse Johnston-Hill, the LFI Education Coordinator work together to connect the bi-weekly gardening visits to meet learning objectives in a variety of subjects including Science, Social Studies, Math, and Art.

There are 6 blooming and budding horse troughs 6 by 2 feet that are situated in three of Cartier Court’s Courtyards filled with compost that was donated by the City of Revelstoke. These raised beds are wheelchair accessible and the location at the care-facility provides summer care and appreciation that most schoolyard gardens don’t receive in the summer months. The children’s plant knowledge and recognition has sky-rocketed through the season and some intergenerational friendships have bloomed.

The residents and staff of Mount Cartier were delighted with this year’s intergenerational gardening program. Anne Keller, a passionate gardener and Recreation Therapist at Cartier Court Facility, said everyone involved benefitted.  “It was wonderful to watch the excitement and sense of wonder shared by the children and the seniors,” Keller said. “It truly was a classroom in bloom.”

The Garden Partnership Project connects Arrow Heights Elementary students with Mt. Cartier Court Extended Care Facility residents to garden together. Photo: Keri Knapp/Local Food Initiative

This past March, Amber Thompson’s new grade 4 class picked their seeds and will be starting to sow them in early April. Their seedlings will grow under lights at the facility and be visited every two weeks by the students who will observe, sketch, measure, water, weed, succession plant and harvest until summer break.

The renowned environmentalist writer Rachel Carson , “If a child is to keep his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.”

Stay Tuned on www.revelstokelocalfood.com for other projects we have kicking off with the warming weather!