CFE Day 2

 Tuesday May 12 - Weather - Sunny 

We started the day at the front steps of the Scarfe building to begin our garden ecopoetry tour. After Susan explained ecopoetry and sketch-poerty, we began our walk. 

Our first stop was in front of Scarfe. Susan explained that there was an effort to turn the area with the benches into a garden. There were illustrations and even a 3D model, but the dean said no. The reason was that a garden would look too messy and it may affect the opinion of visiting parents of potential students.
The idea of calling a garden messy stuck with me. While I can understand where that is coming from, I would never call nature messy. I think it is really telling to use that word in that way. Telling of their priorities and their perspective of nature and the land. A better word to use might be organic, but not messy. 

We had time to sketch and write poetry about this space, and then we continued on the tour. 

Our next stop was the whale skeleton and the courtyard behind it. Once again, Susan explained how there were efforts to turn the grassy plot of land into the Orchard Garden, but there were already plans. Despite the grass lawn, different parties advocated for biodiversity in the courtyard. Susan told a story of when she was growing up in Hamilton and she would often see shells in the dirt. She explained that shells would eventually get mixed in with the cement. I thought this was interesting because I had been thinking that cement is very different from nature. I wonder if that is the right way to think about it. 

Here I sketched the whale skeleton with the garden overlaid on it. 

Our second to last stop was the guerrilla permaculture garden. Susan explained the story behind it. It was really cool to learn about permaculture and the idea of letting things happen naturally and going with the flow. I found there to be an interesting message there about control. Who gets a say on how a plot of land is used? Why should a fee be paid for encouraging plants to grow? I drew a sketch about it and wrote a comment.

 

 

 We ended the day with gardening! I planted lettuce in the greenhouse with Saul, and then we all collected comfrey to turn into fertilizer. I’m excited to see the results!

I feel even more motivated to teach my students about gardening and especially permaculture. Something tells me that the stories Susan told of how it can be difficult to work with UBC to create gardens rings true of public schools as well. There is a message of power here that I believe can be easily tied to social studies. Who determines what the spaces we live in look like? How much control does an average person have over their environment? Should people have more power in influencing their environment? There are many interesting ways to tie this into my lessons.