Workshops and student events leading up to and participation on our third annual Earth Day dig-in on April 22, 2017 at the Gardens was an incredible success thanks, in strong part, to SSAP.  We hosted self-watering seed-starting workshops using recycled materials to give our plants a good head start for the season and planted over two days at two different sites with spring seeds and seedlings delivered with team support our organic gardening partner, Urban Seedling.  Over 350 students, faculty and staff participated in learning about urban agriculture, organic gardening, and issues and topics related to our food system through this project thus far this year. This includes 14 interns in the Advanced Topics Sociology of Food course who both designed several aspects of the spring and summer garden plan in addition to leading their peers in constructing self-watering containers, opening the garden for the season, planting organic produce, harvesting our first proceeds from the garden, and doubling the gardens’ size at the summer planting with all the goodies that thrive in Montreal’s  hot summer months. The learning opportunities through these sites has been both wide and deep, from students who have shown up to lend a hand for the day to students who have made their experiences and ideas the subject of their research in advanced coursework.

An incredible highlight from all of this has been the reconstitution of a previous gardens’ site in partnership with the Dawson Peace Centre and Dawson First Peoples’ Centre to establish a Three Sisters’ garden at Dawson. This is a testament to the collaborative capacity at Dawson to leverage previous success and new relationships to produce meaningful  ommunitydriven, pedagogically-rich opportunities for Dawson students on campus. The Three Sisters garden, based on the Iroquois creation story, is a companion planting strategy practices for thousands of years by indigenous communities across North America. The site represents a space for students to learn about the contributions of indigenous knowledge in North America, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations for teaching and learning for indigenous and non-indigenous students, and the role that traditional knowledge and culture can play transforming our food system. The new site is sponsored through partnership between the gardens, the First Peoples’ Centre, and the Peace Centre. Students at workshops for seed-starting learned about the new site and the goals of the Three Sisters’ garden through presentations to two voluntary events and one collective workshop wherein two classes participated in starting squash seeds for the Three Sisters’ garden as well as other seeds for two of our gardens sites with the activity linked to course content and material. Students on both the gardens team and from the First Peoples’ Centre not only prepared and planted the new site, but also took the next step to learn about the behind-the-scenes work in projects such as this by applying (successfully) for three grants to supplement funding as well as proposing and instituting new ideas for their management during the summer months. Overall, the fruits of this work contributed to the success of the gardens thus far this year and enabled a wide array of students to become more involved in the Dawson community through extra-curricular and volunteer activities as well as enriched opportunities for learning in a total of seven different courses. Finally, and in addition, it is important to note that our students have mobilized their experience and knowledge both within and beyond the Dawson community. One student volunteer, after logging well over 140 hours in the gardens, took the initiative to lead an advanced French course at Dawson in a lesson and workshop through the gardens. One student is sharing her knowledge of the gardens as part of the Sustainable Campuses initiative at three college campuses in Mexico. Finally, several Dawson internship students and volunteers shared their experiences and knowledge when two classes from Champlain College in Vermont visited us to learn about urban agriculture and our project.