The UBC Orchard Garden is an inter-faculty garden project run by UBC students. The garden project aims to help connect current and studying teachers, university faculty, and UBC students with garden-based learning and teaching. The Orchard Garden created a series of formal workshops for teacher candidates interested in the pedagogies of garden-based learning, and how it relates to the current and new draft BC curricula. Teacher Candidates (myself included) who attended these workshops were awarded a Certificate of Participation for the year.
The workshops were held on the first Saturday of each month, and focused on a variety of practical aspects of gardens in teaching and learning. The workshops included, but were not limited to aspects of gardening practice, social justice, ecology, harvest, food preparation, and historical teachings. Cross curricular links were made with math, sciences, languages, social studies, and the arts.
One particular workshop highlighted the potential for garden-based education as an integrated approach. The workshop itself
identified several related lessons that utilized the garden as a resource, and connected directly to curriculum. The focus of this workshop was herbs, and began with a historical investigation of the use of herbs in Canadian history with a particular emphasis on Indigenous ways of knowing. In the garden, after a period of exploration and discussions around the herb physiology and garden ecology, we were asked to find, identify, and properly harvest the herbs. Once brought back into the classroom, we explored the use of math in harvesting, and in recipes. We then used our harvested herbs to made compound butter as a group, and share eating it with butter. From there, we critically discussed nutrition and various types of diets.
The workshops were well thought out, and touched on many important skills and core competencies. I used much of the knowledge gained at these workshops throughout my Community Field Experience Practicum (ADD LINK).
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