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Children's Teaching Garden meeting, May 2024

From Skylar, May 14, 2024:

Hi All: Follow-up to Monday's meeting. Please review and let me know if I missed anything. Many thanks. Skylar

Vision The Dufferin Grove Park Children's Teaching Garden is an education garden, planted, maintained, and harvested by children, for children. The garden will incorporate indigenous land knowledge.

The garden will educate children, youth and community members about environmental, physical, and social health by providing a variety of environmental education opportunities including curriculum based-school programs, summer Eco Camps, free family drop-ins and free community events.

Community garden program: Saturdays 10-12noon
Guest presenters to give garden-related 30-60 minute talks/demos: Honorarium?
End of garden session snack: muffins & juice & some of the garden-ready harvest to taste or smell (rose petal ice tea, dill, chives, edible flowers/weeds, etc.)

Children's Teaching Garden Project Priorities

1. 10 wood raised planter boxes / 18" high x 40" across x 6 or 8 ft long
2. Remediate the garden space within the fence: weeded, holes filled, soil turned, land leveled, soil repaired with new topsoil
3. Protect serviceberry bush & transplant comfrey & lovage plants
4. Hire city staff person for garden June-August
5. Build shelves inside the garden shed for storing garden equipment
6. Combination lock for shed door

Equipment required

1. Gardening tools: 2 x wheelbarrows, 10 trowels, 10 shovels, 2 hoses, 2 large watering cans, 10 children watering cans, 20 child-sized/10 youth-sized gardening gloves
2. 6 long bamboo poles for 'bean tepee'
3. Compost 2-bin system: active & resting
4. Rain barrel system, attached to the garden shed
5. Shaded cover/sitting area

Garden Design

1. Planter boxes in rows with wood chip paths & space around each planter box for children to work on all sides of the raised-bed gardens
2. Plant a Sunflower Room in a garden corner
3. Build a Bean Tepee
4. Shade sitting area near the garden shed

Ideas of what to grow: (keeping it simple and child-friendly)

1. Vegetables: cherry tomatoes, zucchini, peas, cucumbers, radish, carrots, pumpkin
2. Fruit: strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb
3. Native wildflowers: for bee & butterfly pollinators
4. Perennials: violets, johnny jump-ups, calendula, lemon balm, mint
5. Sunflower Room: for children, birds, bees & seed-collecting
6. Garden pharmacy/medicine: comfrey, calendula, plantain, lemon balm, burdock
7. Edible weeds/flowers: yarrow, lamb's quarters, burdock, nasturtiums, borage

Proposed Garden Workshops

Early Spring:
1. Preparing wooden planters / children-led
2. Planting seeds & labeling seeds
3. Protecting Pollinator Habitats (undisturbed until two-weeks consistent 10C)\\ 4. The Power of Dandelions
5. The Importance of Stinging Nettle & plant cure
6. No Till/Mulch Gardening Practice
7. The Importance of Composting
Summer
1. Edible flowers and weeds
2. The Importance of Watering & Weeding
3. Carnivorous Plants (Rogene Teodoro teodororogene@gmail.com)
4. Identifying Bees
5. All About Butterflies
6. The Importance of Native Pollinator Plants
Fall
1. Harvesting
2. Saving The Seeds
3. Importance of Pollinator Habitats
4. Leave the Leaves
5. Planting Garlic

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From Adam, May 21, 2024

Hi Skylar,

Thank you for taking the time to create these meeting notes. Just a couple things to note regarding the City of Toronto Children’s Teaching Garden:

Who will be the source for indigenous land knowledge? If you have someone in mind, are they willing to volunteer?

For the Saturday workshops in the City of Toronto Children’s Teaching Garden, you would be required to be a City of Toronto volunteer. I have attached the volunteer paperwork to this email. Please see the link below which contains additional information regarding volunteering ( Community Recreation Volunteer Opportunities – City of Toronto )

As mentioned in our meeting there will be no honorariums for guest speakers.

We would not provide snacks every week, except for what is grown and harvested from the garden. We can discuss a harvest celebration or some type of special event at the end of the season where snacks and drinks could be provided.

Children’s Teaching Garden Project Priorities:

• Raised planter boxes will not be provided by Parks due to cost. I was told that Dufferin Grove already has a several of these planter boxes, if necessary, I can ask Parks to move some over to the children’s garden.
• I have already gone ahead and requested Parks to remediate the soil in the space. This will include what you mentioned (removing weeds, filling holes/leveling, soil turned, and new topsoil added)
• Will you be transplanting the serviceberrie and loavage? Please let me know so I can inform Parks prior to their visit to remediate the soil.
• I will be following the scheduling project with regards to staffing. I will schedule a staff who will support workshops, plant, and assist maintaining the garden. I will setup another meeting once we have the staff scheduled so we can ensure everyone is on the same page.
• I have reached out to Parks to request installation of shelving for the garden shed in the children’s teaching garden.

    Combination lock will be purchased. 

Equipment:

• I will reach out to parks to assist with some of these requests. I will see what I can do.

Garden Design:

• Great suggestions and ideas. We will need to revisit this once a staff is scheduled. Our staff will have to provide their input for the City of Toronto Children’s Teaching Garden because they will be using it to provide programming for summer camps.

Ideas of what to grow: (keeping it simple and child-friendly)

• All great suggestions, again the staff working the garden will need to have some input into what is planted. The primary focus of the City of Toronto Children’s Teaching Garden will be Summer Camps from June-August.

Proposed Garden Workshops

• All great ideas. What are you personally willing to lead for the Spring and Summer session? Again, this would be working together with the staff scheduled. We would not be scheduling guest speakers or providing honorariums.
• I will set up another meeting once I schedule a staff for the garden. In the meantime, we will work on getting the soil remediated and some of the tools we will require.

Have a great day.

Adam Tyzler, Community Recreation Programmer, West Toronto York, 437-331-8315

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May 28, 2024, from Skylar

Hi Adam: Response to your comments regarding the Children's Teaching Garden proposal.

1. Michele is looking for an indigenous person to volunteer (or maybe there is a grant available) for the indigenous component to the DGP Children's Teaching Garden.

2. Definitely no touching the planter boxes in the Circle Garden by the Field House. We will design the garden plot directly in the remediated soil. We have a source for free bricks to border the garden plots.

3. Is there a time-line for the remediated soil in the Children's Teaching Garden? The DGP Garden Co-op Volunteers need notice to make arrangements to protect the small serviceberry tree and transplant a few perennial bushes. Also we want to keep, and incorporate, the large-rock-half-circle as a garden 'feature'.

4.Time-line for hiring a city staff worker for the garden?

Thank you for arranging to get the garden soil remediated, for getting shelves built in the garden shed and for arranging for garden tools.

We are looking forward to the next meeting with you and the staff garden city worker.

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