B.A.S.E. Daycare & John Grant Entrepreneurial & Environmental Collaboration
MONTREAL – Students from John Grant High School put their entrepreneurial and wood working skills to use in EMSB B.A.S.E. Daycares this June by helping to build a total of seven garden beds at Cedarcrest Elementary and John Caboto Academy.
On Monday June 3, under the leadership of their science teacher Anthony Fowler, John Grant Pre-Work 1 students arrived at John Caboto Academy to build one 8-by-4-foot garden bed for the schoolyard garden. The funds for the wood came from a Jane Goodall grant the B.A.S.E. Daycare Green Club applied for and received to help rebuild their schoolyard garden. The Green Club also applied for a Quebec Entrepreneurship Contest grant to help rebuild their existing garden beds.
On Monday, June 17, the same group of high school students built six garden beds for the new garden project at Cedarcrest Elementary. This garden has gone through many phases, transforming from a temporary water reservoir garden made up of rows of blue bins in 2017, to a few simple garden beds, to the new and improved set of six raised cedar planters built by the John Grant students. On Tuesday, June 18, students and Eco Quartier planted eight trees (donated by Soverdi) and filled the new garden beds with earth. The funds for the lumber and supplies came from a Jane Goodall grant and the Cedarcrest Green Club also won a grant from the Quebec Entrepreneurship Contest.
Student council at Cedarcrest are currently fundraising through a birdhouse project to be able to purchase a sail roof for their outdoor classroom. In the meantime, they rolled up swaths of grass and created a beautiful pathway, using mulch, to the future outdoor classroom location that will hopefully have tree-log seating and a sail shelter.
These efforts are just one part of the amazing work happening within the Environmental Consciousness Educational Core of the EMSB B.A.S.E. Daycare Program. Of the 30 B.A.S.E. Daycare schools, 22 have schoolyard gardens that are constantly growing as well as educating students and the school community at large. Visit the B.A.S.E. Daycare Green Club blog to find out more about what’s happening in the Green Clubs. You can also volunteer in the schoolyard garden closest to you! Fill out the form below to get started – only enthusiasm required!
