Renovating the Garden with Upper School Students

The process.

This past spring, Extension worked with a group of Upper School students to renovate and design a garden space in the natural cove area of Fariss Hall. Students started the process by interviewing adults on campus we had identified as stakeholders, as well as students of various ages. From there, we looked at images of other school gardens in the Portland area grow our inspiration and ideas. Then we reflected on what we had heard, what our biggest take aways were, and what our inspirations were. Finally, we went through a design thinking process - using gathered information and ideas, and being in the space together, the upper school students began to plan. We ended up working as a whole group each morning to design and build beds, pathways and stairs. In the afternoon we formed smaller sub groups around water, wood, art and plants.

Before.

Mapping it out.

Bringing plans to life.

Partnering with Beginning Years Home Base.

The last hour each day we formed a partnership with Beginning Years students participating in our Home Base Extension program, through a pop up garden class. The Upper School students and Beginning Years students paired up to do tasks around the garden, from planting, to forming pathways, to decorating rocks. It was the favorite part of our day by far!

It was an amazing week, building a garden alongside building connections with each other.

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Summer gardeners.

Over the summer we hosted a week long summer camp where we explore gardens around the Portland area, as well as our own Fariss Garden. We had a wonderful combination of OES students, as well as local Portland students and international students. We cared for Fariss Garden with soil preparation, thinning carrots, watering, harvesting produce and of course weeding! One of the locations we visited was Minto Island Growers (and Tea Farm!). We were excited to be hosted by an OES alum, whose family owns and operates the farm. Picking onions. Sampling the tea. Students agreed it was delicious! We were also gifted our own tea plant to bring home, and we planted it in Fariss Garden. We were served a farm to table lunch! BLT's, veggie gyros, wood fired pizza and blueberry milkshakes. We made food every day, using produce we picked or sourced from a local vendor. The zucchini carro...

A special wormy guest.

One afternoon during Beginning Years Extension... we had a special guest - a bin of red wriggler worms! We learned about them, then got to keep them for the summer to observe and feed. We even got to take some of the liquid at the bottom of the bin, a special compost tea, as well as some of the worm castings, and add it to our strawberry bed to fertilize. Over the summer, students made overnight oat stew to feed the worms. They like fruits and veggies, oatmeal, and egg shells to help them digest food in their bellies. We used our scraps that were leftover from cooking and baking with garden produce, mixed it into some oats, added some water, and let it sit overnight.

Welcoming in the Community

After the spring 2018 renovation was done, we invited in the community to explore the space. Everyone was invited to take a tour and play. Signs were posted around the garden, to give information and also ask questions. Everyone who came into the garden was able to choose their favorite variety of sunflower to plant! We also served lemonade! Inspired by the garden, there was mint, strawberry and plain lemonade. We invited everyone to leave us comments on sticky notes. We learned that a lot of students loved the lemonade, were excited about gardening, and some even requested a tad pole pond addition and wondered if we could grow food to eat.

Fariss Garden

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