Thomson School Community Garden

Regina school launching community garden

By Braden Husdal, Regina Leader-Post

Published: Friday, May 23, 2008

REGINA — Eating vegetables is about to become an organic experience for one Regina elementary school.

Thomson Community School announced plans on Friday to launch a community garden in partnership with the Core Community Association and the Regina Senior Citizens Centre.

The partnership is the only one of its kind in the city and will aim to provide fresh, organically grown vegetables to members of one of Regina’s most in-need communities.

“The students will hopefully be involved with the care of the garden and learning about growing vegetables and providing themselves with their own food,” said Nikko Snyder, chair of the Core Community Association’s Community Garden Committee. “Thomson School also has a nutrition program so some of the produce will go back into the school, while the rest will be distributed throughout the community.”

The garden was developed on a large section of land in the corner of the school’s playground area. Garden dirt has been brought in to provide better growing conditions and part of the garden is slightly raised to help provide wind shelter for other plants.

The care of the garden will rest jointly with students, school staff and Core community volunteers. Because Thomson is one of the city’s most diverse elementary schools, the opportunity to take students back to their roots is being embraced by school leaders.

“We’re extremely excited to partner with the community on the garden,” said Brent Bachiu, principal of Thomson Community School. “A project like this has huge potential and any community in the city could build on the same model.”

The plan for the garden was announced in front of the Thomson student body outdoors near the garden. The excitement about the responsibility to grow their own vegetables was evident throughout the assembled grades.

“We’re all doing this together and the whole school is involved,” said Ramsha Sultan, a Grade 7 student at Thomson. “We’re learning about nutrition and because most of us don’t eat healthy it’s giving us an idea of some good things that we can eat.

“We’ll be growing cucumbers, carrots, and I think potatoes. Once they start to grow I think we’ll all want to eat them because we helped out.”

The garden is also seen as a good way to kick off the Core Neighborhood Sustainability Action Plan, which will be going before the City of Regina’s Planning Commission in a few weeks. The plan was developed by the city and focuses on ways to revitalize the community without displacing those who already live there, and places emphasis on food security and sustainable initiatives.

“This community is evolving and it has a lot of challenges as an inner city community,” said Snyder. “To bring together different generations of people in the community working together and learning from each other is just a really special opportunity.

“Any community needs that kind of partnership, but especially in the inner-city it’s great to have this kind of opportunity here.”