Anna and Meilang are a couple of the elementary students working at Orchard Gardens for the next few weeks. Meilang finished her practicum with kindergarteners. Every week she went on a nature walk with two kindergarten classes. She is looking forward to spending more time outdoors and learning more about outdoor education and gardening. Anna had planted pollinator flowers (Cosmos) with her grade three class. Her students enjoyed observing their growth and found value in knowing that growing these plants was an act of stewardship as they had discussed how pollination is beneficial to the local biodiversity.
Today we spent time with Carly at Roots on the Roof at UBC!
Carly gave us all a tour of the garden, explained the different plants that are growing, and we learned that certain plants need a specific pollinator (e.g. some flowers can only be pollinated by bees). Some pollinator flowers have unique features that help them reproduce. For example, flowers that are pollinated by hummingbirds are often longer shaped to accommodate the hummingbirds’ long beaks. As pictured, the lupin flowers fold open when a bee lands on them. It was fascinating to watch as the bees efficiently made their way around pollinating this plant.
We got to work doing some weeding and in return for our hard work Carly gifted us some plants, including chocolate mint! We were also informed that there is another rooftop garden located on one of the engineering buildings and hope to visit it at some point as well. Thanks so much to Carly and Roots on the Roof for hosting us and we hope to visit again!
Back at Orchard Gardens, we got to plant cucumbers and basil. These plants were put into a patch of the garden with extremely dry soil as it had been covered with a tarp for about 2 weeks. We learned today that when soil gets extremely dry it becomes hydrophobic. It took a bit of patience and time to water the newly planted plants but in the end they were looking happy and healthy!
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