Beginning a partnership...

Last spring we invited interested classrooms into the garden to work in the soil and put on their science gardener caps to start to slow down, observe and think about what was happening in the space all around them. We prepared beds, added compost, planted seeds and starts, watered, built/placed structures for support, and watched with wonder and excitement as the garden started to transform.

Here are a few glances of students of those moments.

Filling up the bed that has become a strawberry patch.

Project manager - creating and checking off garden jobs for the day.

Planting beans to grow up the fence.

Making garden markers.

Sunflower seeds peeking out of the ground, still with the seed attached to the top.

Preparing soil and planting radishes.

Planting little starts.

Looking for dry soil to water.

Watering the strawberries.

Planting flowers.

Preparing beds to plant. Lifting and loosening soil and adding in compost.

Watering lettuce and nasturtium seeds.

Planting tomatoes! Many of our tomatoes were donated from seeds people had grown had home.

Watering in the tomatoes and adding supports.

Bringing over the supports for tomatoes!

Planting various bean varieties along the fence.

Digging up those weeds!

Watering in the freshly planted flowers.

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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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