Fog, fall, and failure

My dissertation writing days have begun in earnest now - days spent writing, reading, and sitting inside. Out in the garden, fall and fog transform the space into a mysterious world. It is hard to come to terms with things falling apart but even this has its own beauty.

This morning, two graduate students from an Environmental Education course met me in the foggy garden to plan their class visit next week.

"We don't have anything like this garden at our university in China," the one student commented.

"Well, we won't much longer either," I replied with sad, resigned laughter.

The final stage of my installation based PhD research project, Threads sown, grown & given was to explore the ideas and practices around gift giving, in education and in relation with land. The webs we spun as gifts in March 2013 are slowly collapsing but most still hang, bejewelled with fog dew. My hope now is to carry the energy of the garden and this installation series forward into my dissertation writing. A difficult hope that is sure to fail. But failure, it turns out, is one of the themes of my dissertation I have slowly grown to appreciate: "Just as any human enterprise is defined by what it excludes, it is a culture's failures - quickly forgotten, repressed, buried away - which have the most to say about that culture's beliefs and values" (Antebi et al., eds., 2008, p. 12).


--Julia Ostertag, PhD Candidate, EDCP

[Please search "installation" on this blog for more posts related to my research project. Comments are also always welcome!]

Developing the Chinese Market Garden/Native Plant Garden

The first bok choi at the Chinese Market Garden.  

 About 2 years ago, the Chinese Market Garden and Native Plant Garden was developed. It is a living experiment in teaching and learning about the largely untold shared history of Chinese migrant communities and Musqueam First Nations people here on the banks of the Fraser River, on unceded traditional Musqueam territory.

Listen to Michael Pollan on Ted Talks - a great exploration into other sentient ways of being alive with the more-than-human, particularly plants. I love imagining the ways of knowing of plants and the things we can learn from this perspectival shift, as Pollan suggests. This is the technology we need to change the world!

For more on this, you can also watch Smarty Plants on the Nature of Things with David Suzuki. Really  fascinating implications for how we conceive of "consciousness" as not within entities but within relationships.

Julia

Enclosures and trespassers

cut seed bolls, retting flax, September 2012

The etymology of the word 'garden' can be traced back to the word 'enclosure'. As such, it is a territory - one that, whether in imagination or in reality, may be trespassed.

On Wednesday last week, for the fourth time, I went to work with the flax at the garden only to discover that an invisible hand had cut off seed bolls and removed large portions flax from where it's been drying and retting in the field (dew retting is the slow rotting process by which the linen fibres separate from the woody "boon" or outer stem through moisture, heat, and the collaboration of a multitude of micro-organisms, click here for more on retting).

The Benefits of Learning in an Outdoor Classroom

Sunflower in The Orchard Garden

Thanks to one of our readers, Florine, for sending us the following article describing the 'proven' benefits of outdoor learning.  Many of us who work in the field of garden-based learning frequently take it for granted that not everyone has been exposed to or understands the complexities and possibilities of learning outside.
While there is no generic one-size-fits all method of using gardens as learning spaces, we love that educators are getting excited about the myriad opportunities beyond the four-walled classroom!

Welcome to the outdoor classroom installation

This is my first blog post for “Threads Sown & Grown, Woven & Given,” the title of the outdoor classroom installation series that is central to my PhD research into the relationships between gardens and education.

Outdoor classroom installation (bottom right) at The Orchard Garden, UBC. July 18, 2012

First of all, for readers of this blog who live in the Vancouver area, I invite you to visit The Orchard Garden on the UBC campus to experience this site-specific installation as you might any artistic installation: by moving through it in situ with an open, attentive mind and mindful body. Come by any time or contact me in advance if you would like me to join you in the garden. [If you’re interested in learning more about earth art as a form of site-specific installation art, this is the time to visit Vancouver’s Van Dusen garden].

Secondly, since this blog is an important space for documenting an ephemeral arts-based research project, I invite you participate in the process by sharing your own comments, thoughts, links, questions, and so on. I will moderate comments to ensure that there is no identifying information and that all postings are respectful. Contributions to the blog will form part of my “data” for my doctoral research, and may be included in my dissertation, publications, and presentations.

Finally, what is this project about? In future blog posts I will write more about the historical, material, and theoretical “threads” of this research and installations. In very general terms, however, through an arts-based research process, I inquire – with loving criticality – into the relationships between gardening and education, and specifically the concept of “garden (or nature) as teacher.” Together with teacher education students at UBC’s Faculty of Education, I explore how a garden is an enclosure, much like a classroom perhaps. It frames what is known and knowable. But what else is possible?

Desks growing in neat rows. July 9, 2012

The first phase of this installation series, “Threads Sown & Grown,” creates this frame: it is where I planted a classroom with 24 student desks and one teacher’s desk, all out of flax. The walls are framed with cedar posts, wheat & barley, and tall bean plants. Windows – still in progress – will depict a montage of historical school gardening images, including more problematic contexts such as Nazi Germany and residential schooling.

The second phase, “Threads Woven & Given,” explores what else is possible. Beginning,in September, I will harvest the flax and, alongside teacher education students, create a linen textile installation that will be returned to the garden in the spring as a regenerative gift. Central to figuring out how to turn flax into linen will be collaborating with the incredible Urban Weaver project.

I will try to conclude each post with a question or two. Here’s a big one: Does teaching with gardens make other ways of knowing and being possible? How? Why might this be difficult?

Or, if you’re interested in something more concrete: How does flax become linen? Do you have any experience with retting, breaking or scrutching you’d like to share? Or resources/tools?

On that note: My next blog post will delve into my love affair with flax…

Thanks for reading,

Julia Ostertag

PhD Candidate, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, UBC

(Please email julia_ostertag@yahoo.ca if you would like more information about the project)

Alternative Practicum Closing Reflections...

 

Lauren harvests radishes and plants bok choi in The Chinese Market Garden

This week marked the culmination of our pilot Alternative Practicum in The Orchard Garden with Lauren & Alison.  The three weeks were filled with rich discussion, weeding, digging, planting, field trips to learning gardens, and curriculum planning.  We are now in the process of synthesizing Lauren's & Alison's experiences to refine our program for future years.  It has been enormously stimulating and gratifying to work together!

 

Lauren helps Julia prepare the soil for Julia's site-specific, performative doctoral research... stay tuned for more!

Here is Lauren's final reflection:

I am sad to say that this is the last day of the Alternative Practicum at The Orchard Garden, UBC. This past week we were blessed with sun (and brisk winds), on our gardening days at the OG. My freckles have appeared on my nose and my wrists have been a bit sore, but both are welcomed symptoms of time spent outside, working the land while having discussions of material culture studies, agricultural practices, pollination, food, curriculum, and pedagogy. We had a chance to harvest and share some radishes from the OG which were delicious! We also had a chance to work in the green house again which is always interesting. I have become much more comfortable over the past three weeks in the outdoor space, the OG office, Agora, and the greenhouse. I believe that this is an integral part of being able to educate and communicate in an outdoor space and may only occur with lived experience and time spent in the space and with the land.

My practicum partner and I had the pleasure of riding our bikes out to Sir Tupper School this week, as well. We had the opportunity to have a tour of the Greenway and to speak with a passionate and motivated teacher who has her hands in the soil, so to speak. She showed us before pictures of the space to give us some context, and it was truly amazing to see how a space can be created that can enable the community to connect, the arts to be supported, and healthy relationships to grow. This was a truly amazing project to see and learn about.

Although next week is the start of my classes again, we are hosting a Pollination workshop on Thursday, May 17 from 3:30pm – 5:30pm which is geared toward Bed students. I will be continuing to research eco-art, material culture studies, and curricular links to art, food, and gardening in the following months and after my degree. The intersections of these areas are extremely interesting to me, both from an educational lens and from a personal artistic lens.

Thanks for reading and please come to check out the Orchard Garden!

Thank the land,

Lauren Everall.

Alternative Practicum: Reflections from Week 2

Alison & Lauren have been busy at work planting and weeding The Orchard Garden, considering how to plan and design a school garden, visiting other learning gardens in Vancouver, and doing individual research on pollination, place-based education, garden-based curriculum, and much more!  Here are their reflections from this week:

 

Alison & Lauren weed our asparagus patch

Lauren's reflection:  

 Last summer four women, including myself, biked south from Vancouver, BC to
Tiajuana, Mexico. We were in search of people that had followed their ideas to live a
more creative and sustainable life. Upon my return to Vancouver, BC, I have had the
ever present feeling of nostalgia for this bike tour. I miss the people, the ideas, the risk
taking, and that oh-so-amazing feeling of earthly goodness that occurs when people are
doing what makes them happy and it aligns with, for lack of a better word, goodness.
Having the time and focus to research, converse with peers, question, plan, and search
on this alternative practicum has been nothing short of amazing. It is rare, I think, to feel
like your work is your play. By this I do not mean easy, I mean intrinsically motivated.
 

This week The Alternative Practicum Pair, Alison and I, brainstormed and visually
planned out our dream school gardens. I had an epiphany that learning gardens did not
merely have to be ʻby the bookʼ school gardens. Oh no, they could be spiral wheat and
rye plantings that could be used for weaving. Gardens could be planted with all of the
richest of pigment plants for natural dying in the art room. The creation of a school
garden, could in fact, mimic the creative process. It can be more than a link of PLOʼs, it
can be the curriculum. I also realized that itʼs valuable to dream, but also good to learn
the facts and possible road blocks of incorporating learning gardens and outdoor
classrooms into the curriculum.
We also had the opportunity to visit some amazing projects and learn from some
amazing folks in the field. We joined a morning grade 9 Home Economics class for an
Edible Tour of an inner-city farm with Tess, a very knowledgeable and engaging citizen of
the ʻmeaningful foodʼ club. Numerous community centered projects are run at the
organic urban farm, including CSA shares. It is a gem of land and I urge anyone who
hasnʼt visited, to do so.
We also ventured out to a secondary school in Deep Cove to see what the school
garden was like there. We experienced the positive energy of the school from the
moment we walked through the front doors. The learning garden is composed of four
raised beds and is mostly teacher lead, as far as maintenance and planning goes. A few
classes make curricular use of the garden, such as the Foods class and the Biology
class. All of the food from this garden is donated to low-income community members,
which is a wonderful way to bridge the school and the community.
Yesterday, May 3rd, we worked in the rain and mud on-site at The Orchard Garden in
good spirits. We revived the herb garden and searched for the asparagus, one of my
favourite growers. In the afternoon, we had the amazing experience of a visit to another secondary school on the east side of Vancouver.  The visit was lead by three Leadership class students. I was,
almost, speechless! The amount of student leadership, responsibility, knowledge, and
experiential learning going on was enough to get any B.Ed student excited! There is a
bike/compost pick-up program, a vermicompost, raised beds, berries, greenhouse
(student built), fish, hydrogen/nitrogen/ water closed system grower, etc! It blew my
mind!
I am amazed and I feel so lucky to have found the same excitement I found on my bike
tour to Mexico. Itʼs so energizing and encouraging to connect with dedicated, motivated,
creative, good-souled people all working on projects and ideas to make this world a
positive space for all to live.
Thank the Land,
Lauren

 

Alison's photo of a visit to a learning garden

Alison's reflection:

What a week! Building on last week’s momentum, things really took off these past five days. Again, time is of the essence as we worked to schedule meetings for garden design, curriculum development, outdoor work and visits to several garden spaces in the city. The visits to different garden sites also seemed to build on each other in terms of structure and student/teacher engagement. We participated in a Home Economics 9 class visit to an off-site farm, where students were given an edible tour of an urban farm close to their school. Almost all of the students had seen the farm on their way to and from school, but none had actually stopped to visit or ask questions before this point. Almost all were happy to get involved in some weeding, and a few students expressed interest in volunteering- Future urban farmers in the making!

The other two visits took place on-site at each school’s location. The first garden had been developed through a teacher initiative, and was used as an instructional space on occasion by several classes. While the garden wasn’t wholly integrated into school programming, it was a positive addition to the school’s atmosphere, and can be enjoyed by all students, staff and community members who spend time in the common area. The second garden was a sight to behold - a full loop system that incorporates compost from neighboring schools. The program was developed five  years ago by a teacher interested in gardening, and it has developed into a student run initiative that has been integrated into each grade through the Leadership program.  I am so inspired to see youth stepping up and taking active roles in this project. 

I feel so fortunate for the opportunities I have been afforded through this practicum so far. My only wish would be to have more time to explore these practices. I can’t believe there’s only one week left!

Alternative Practicum Reflections

During Alison & Lauren's 3-week Alternative Practicum in The Orchard Garden, they will be contributing reflections on their learning, activities, field trips, ideas & questions.  Here are their initial thoughts:

"After completing the standard 10 week practicum in a regular high school, the 3 week alternate practicum is a breath of fresh air – literally! Our observational visit to Landed Learning was a great reminder of how students react positively to learning in an outdoor environment that is so different from a typical classroom. Working and learning outdoors for most of this past week has been a refreshing influence on my ideas for lesson and unit plans for my teachable subjects. My plan for this practicum is to complete curriculum documents (at least one unit) for secondary subjects that incorporate gardens as learning environments. It’s also daunting to have to consider how much I can actually accomplish in 3 weeks! But I can always reassure myself that lifelong learning doesn’t have any deadlines. All in all, I am inspired to see that teaching and learning practices can take many different forms, and I am looking forward to exploring different lessons and teaching techniques in garden environments." - Alison

"Today is the first Friday of the Alternative Practicum here, at The Orchard Garden. I am loving it so far. Transitory phases are always a tad clumsy; my mind, stress levels, and physical self have all had to ‘switch gears’ this week. The past three months have been spent teaching Art 9, Art 11, and Ceramics 10 in Nelson, BC. Now, I am back in Vancouver and am experiencing a flood of ‘adult-face-time’. Conversations centered on pedagogy, curriculum, gardening, farming, food, art, and education have been in full force this week. In two words I would describe my feelings as ‘ultimate comfort’ or ‘ultimate happiness’. This first week has been filled with meetings, discussions, and emails about all of the possibilities for an alternative practicum. A few of which are signage, research, web design, ‘field trips’, workshops, newsletters, curriculum documents and resources, garden planning, plant variety selections, soil testing, community schools, Landed Learning, bees, planting seeds, mushroom manure, research, etc. So much to think about and collaborate on, but only three weeks!

Stay tuned to hear about our visits next week to some Learning Gardens and Farms…….

Thank the land,

Lauren."

The Importance of a Garden: AERA visits The Orchard Garden!

 

After so many, many months of cold rain, we were blessed with gorgeous sunshine on Friday for a visit by an international group of scholars and colleagues in the field of environmental education.  This year Vancouver is hosting the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA)- we were honoured to participate in the conference and host an off-site visit to The Orchard Garden as well as the Intergenerational Landed Learning Project at the UBC Farm (check out their link: Landed Learning).

 

The group of roughly 35 participants traveled from the convention center to the UBC Farm on a white hybrid bus.

 

Jolie describes the Intergenerational Landed Learning Project (celebrating 10 years this June!)

 

The group explored the garden where elementary children and their "Farm Friend" mentors cultivate group garden plots over the course of 12 visits to the farm

 

To wrap up at the farm, the group enjoyed a kale salad from the garden, and local bread and cheese while Tathali described her doctoral research on culturally-sensitive food practices within the Intergenerational Landed Learning Project

For the second half of the off-site conference visit the group traveled by hybrid bus to visit us in The Orchard Garden.

 

The group divided in half to discuss related garden-based learning projects, pedagogical principles of learning gardens, researching slow pedagogy in the garden, embodied learning in the garden, troubling cultural narratives of 'Garden as Paradise', teacher education in learning gardens, the sociocultural context of learning gardens, and performing more-than-human research methodologies in the garden.  The conversation was rich with diverse perspectives as participants hailed from Australia, Sweden, the U.S., and Canada.

 

Julia discusses her performative methodologies for her doctoral research

 

Susan discusses her research around troubling cultural narratives of gardens as Eden

 

The group explores the garden and discusses the pedagogical challenges/benefits in using gardens as outdoor classrooms

 

A chickadee is nesting in one of the birdhouses children made for us last summer.  We are eagerly looking forward to potential mason bees joining us this week.  Cover crops of rye, fava, alfalfa & vetch are leafy and green.  Garlic is sporting strong, strapping leaves.  The sun is shining.  We are honoured to share this garden and learning space with our ecological partners as well as this wonderful group of scholars, writers, teachers, and gardeners.  

Thank you to Marcia and the Environmental Education Special Interest Group for giving us the opportunity to share our efforts. 

"you can't garden nature": considering the meaning of native and non-native plants

Thanks to Dr. Pat O'Riley for sharing this article with us:  http://odewire.com/187471

As we write a grant for native plant material and research appropriate ways to use the garden to dialogue around the topic of native and non-native plants, we are reminded of the fluidity of origins, place and time, as well as the importance of understanding the relationality of plants without romanticizing or privileging one type over another.  While we seek to incorporate a diversity of plants in our garden, we must recognize that this diversity is for the benefit of cultural learning and sharing, as well as for the direct ecosystems with which we partner.  The conversation of native and non-native plants is complex, involving issues of invasiveness and ecological balance as well as stories and ancestry.  We look forward to continuing this conversation in our research and gardening...

Saltwater City Youth Camp

Following on the heels of the CEDAR camp on Friday, yesterday we were joined by a relatively smaller camp as part of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society.  The young teens weeded, harvested and planted vegetables (bok choi, mustards, gai lan) in the Chinese market garden as well as other parts of the garden.  The afternoon culminated with a garden salad using mustard greens and bok choi as well as other standards such as red romaine and radishes.

The historical objective of inviting this camp to the garden is to honour the past and present agricultural contributions of  Chinese farmers in Vancouver as well as throughout the Pacific Rim. As our team is all of European descent we have relied on the expertise of local Chinese farmers as well as board members from the Chinese Canadian Historical Society.  One such expert is UBC History Professor, Henry Yu, who raised an important point as we were about to eat our salad yesterday.  Historically, Chinese would never eat salad or other raw vegetables for the simple reason that human excrement was used as a regular and powerful fertilizer ("night soil"), requiring all vegetables to be cooked prior to consumption.  Not only is this valuable information regarding the multiple ways cultures engage with the land, it also reminds us of the diversity in ethnic cuisines and the farming methods that have informed these traditions.  This project continues to highlight the many ways in which different cultures grow and eat food- a neglected aspect in many learning gardens.

On the campers second visit in mid-August we will be preparing a more traditional Chinese evening meal with vegetables from the garden.

I handed over my camera again today- all photos are from the children in the camp...

A preliminary conversation with Coyote & Raven: Working the Land

Below is a brief discussion between Julia Ostertag and Coyote & Raven (Peter Cole & Pat O'Riley) about what types of discussions need to be brought into our Outdoor Classroom project.

narrativity, Indigeneity, social justice, environmental justice

also garden design materials soils drainage

the small creatures that are parts of our gardens

native plants companion planting diffierent

kinds of gardens the effects of 'alien' or 'invasive'

speciies on native ones

at the same time that agriculture canada limits the import

of the thousands of varieties of vegetables that are native to

this hemisphere including some that would be suitable for growing

in the lower mainland we are still very much limited in terms of varieties

including in potatoes corn squash because of commercial

interests trumping individual/noncommercial interests [which

is the overwhelming majority] fear of blights and smuts and rusts

[on another note I like too the idea of the outdoor kitchen

at the ubc farm the strawbale construction the adobe

oven even making your own ceramic pots and various

ways of constructing and firing them though not for this short class]

I wonder if you know of the iseli nursery in boring oregon

my brother in law who is a horticulturalist in se bc

at a large tree nursery told me about it - I'd love

to go and visit it some time it has a really good

reputation in the nursery industry people who love plants

kukwstum'c

pc

**********************************************************

These are exactly the difficult questions of how we engage in placing ourselves within landscapes. For instance, at our last group meeting, we discussed how we want to work the soil. Until now, all the work has been done by hand but a proposal had been put forward to rototill. After group discussion, we decided to maintain the human-powered aspect of the site, largely for philosophical reasons.

The challenge is for us to bring these conversations with us in our everyday practices as learners, teachers, gardeners. Not always easy. There's an ongoing sense of urgency driving our human activities, which means we often forget or over-ride other important considerations. The spring push to plant meant that collaborative processes of design were neglected: "The soil needs to be worked" was a common refrain. I'm curious what the soil "really" thinks, when we speak on its behalf in this way.

Raining again. We're heading to the farm this afternoon to bake at the bread oven :)

Cheers,

Julia

***************************************************************

when I was speaking with one of the mayan people who work the gardens at

the graduate indigenous conference he said they didn't use any tools just

their hands

I dug the earth from about the age of 4 or 5 with a shovel or garden fork and of

course on my hands and knees (the way one enters a sweat lodge)

to get the rocks and weeds out very often working from the early morning

until after dark sometimes even a few hours into the dark in the spring and fall

- my parents were against the use of rototillers powered lawn mowers it was

labour intensive ... it was only the hand tools that came from the owners of the

means of product shovels hoes rakes augers picks edgers hedge clippers

pruners weeders but then again we had a coal and wood stove for heat and baking

and we pumped our water from a well at home used an outhouse toilet allseason

and only had candles and/or coal oil lanters/lamps for light a lovely light to read by

some stayed with the non fossil fuel technologies some embraced the motored newcomers

but not chez nous though we did get an electric lawn mower eventually it was

like a helpful intruder

when I had my own landscaping and gardening company we bought

power equipment to augment our hand tools I always appreciated the feel and

smell and scent of the earth it's humbling to be close to the earth but in a business

the motorized machines sure cut down the prep time though they were not good

for weeding they just cut up the rhizomes which propagated them even more

it's lovely to see how much life there is in the soil and close to it the spirit of

food nourishes us the spirit of the soil nourishes the plants

see http://thecirclenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=488&Itemid=75

pc