We acknowledge that the University of British Columbia Vancouver Campus (UBCV) is located on Musqueam land and honour this consciousness as inhabitants of the land in which we dwell and work.
The Orchard Garden is an outdoor classroom, located on Totem Field at the UBCV. It is a student-initiated and student-led, inter-faculty garden project providing collaborative, hands-on, immersive, and experimental learning opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and pre- and in-service teachers. At the Orchard Garden, we grow food for the Agora Cafe, for community sales, and for the Orchard Garden Workshop series.
We aim to cultivate knowledge and confidence in the practice of urban organic food production, advance Garden-Based Learning, and research and enhanced teacher education.
Our work is interdisciplinary at every level, partnering with the Intergenerational Landed Learning Project, the UBC Farm, Agora Café, Roots on the Roof, Think & Eat Green @ School, and the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. We are also in direct partnership with the ecological communities that share this site: the bees, sparrows, spiders, nematodes, earthworms, hawks, sun, wind and rain that make this growth possible.
The Orchard Garden is an outdoor classroom, located on Totem Field at the UBCV. It is a student-initiated and student-led, inter-faculty garden project providing collaborative, hands-on, immersive, and experimental learning opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and pre- and in-service teachers. At the Orchard Garden, we grow food for the Agora Cafe, for community sales, and for the Orchard Garden Workshop series.
We aim to cultivate knowledge and confidence in the practice of urban organic food production, advance Garden-Based Learning, and research and enhanced teacher education.
Our work is interdisciplinary at every level, partnering with the Intergenerational Landed Learning Project, the UBC Farm, Agora Café, Roots on the Roof, Think & Eat Green @ School, and the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. We are also in direct partnership with the ecological communities that share this site: the bees, sparrows, spiders, nematodes, earthworms, hawks, sun, wind and rain that make this growth possible.
We are guided by the following principles:
- 1. Through the practice of sustainable, respectful, creative food production, we explore integrated, place-based and ethical ways of learning across the curriculum via the garden.
- 2. Our site is human-scaled and people-powered. We exemplify small-scale, intensive urban agriculture, similar to a backyard or school gardens and urban farms.
- 3. Echoing the UBC Farm motto that “No one thing does just one thing”, we also recognize that there is ‘no one way’ to explore holistic learning within the social and cultural connections of urban agroecosystems. Therefore, we promote student and faculty exploration and experimentation in support of a reflexive systems-based approach to learning.
- 4. We integrate disciplinary and cross-disciplinary research and knowledge dissemination in all our activities. Our findings are subject to peer-review, critical discussion and further development of theory and practice.
- 5. We are committed to cultivating a learning atmosphere of trust, respect, collaboration, passion, and playfulness.
History of The UBC Orchard Garden
The UBC Orchard Garden was established in 2005 as a directed studies project and expanded in 2010 as a cross-faculty project by the UBC Faculties of Education (FoE) and Land and Food Systems (LFS), with participation from the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) and the Faculty of Forestry.
In naming this site ‘The Orchard Garden’, we commemorate the former orchard and its remaining apple trees that span(ned) the campus from the current site to the Faculty of Education.
We have had eight successful growing seasons in which, undergraduate and graduate students have made The Orchard Garden a successful student-lead initiative.
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Partners:
Faculty of Education
http://educ.ubc.ca/
The Intergenerational Landed Learning Project
http://landedlearning.educ.ubc.ca/
Roots on the Roof
https://blogs.ubc.ca/rootsontheroof/
The Intergenerational Landed Learning Project
http://landedlearning.educ.ubc.ca/
Roots on the Roof
https://blogs.ubc.ca/rootsontheroof/
Faculty of Land & Food Systems
http://www.landfood.ubc.ca/
Agora Cafe
http://blogs.landfood.ubc.ca/agora/
School of Architecture & Landscape architecture
http://www.sala.ubc.ca/
Think & Eat Green @ School
www.thinkeatgreen.ca
UBC Farm
http://www.landfood.ubc.ca/ubcfarm/
SEEDS
http://sustain.ubc.ca/seeds
This project has in large part been made possible by the generous funding from UBC's Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (http://tlef.ubc.ca/).
