Unknown vandals might have destroyed some of an elementary school’s class project, but there will still be enough for the Grade 4 students to reap the rewards of their harvest in the fall.
The students in Alannah van Bryce’s class have been planting and nurturing vegetable seeds since late winter as part of the Green Thumb Kids Garden at Albert Lacombe School. Designed to give children in urban areas the chance to see where their food would come from, the class, with help from the Department of Agriculture and the City of St. Albert have been growing vegetables they will make into soup sometime in the fall.
The seedlings were transplanted outside into a fenced-off garden and a summer watering schedule ensured the vegetables were cared for while school was out. About 10 days ago, van Bryce walked by the garden to check up on it and found that it had been vandalized.
“I was devastated for the kids,” she said. “If I don’t get this thing off, there’s no soup for the kids. We have to harvest.”
Boxes of corn were overturned, some of the cabbage, onions and tomato plants had been uprooted and left on the ground and an entire box of carrots had disappeared.
“I got the email and it just crushed me,” said principal Julian Di Castri. “The garden’s right outside my office and I’d hear the hullaballoo and the weeding and watering and excitement. [The kids] bought into this hook, line and sinker.”
Van Bryce says there is still enough produce left intact to salvage the planned Harvest Soup in which the planted vegetables are cooked and shared during a school event. The garden, however, symbolized more than a school project — it fostered a sense of community and drew students closer to both their peers and their family.
“We had the moms there and the grandmothers there that had all this experience with gardening and shared that. I love connecting in real ways with the kids.”
The garden even drew rave reviews from Mayor Nolan Crouse, who stopped while on a bike ride one day before the vandalism took place. He told van Bryce that he would love to attend the Harvest Soup event.
Crouse said this week he still plans to go.
“It’s an opportunity to talk with students about this. They become ambassadors for no vandalism and they learn from this, as negative as it is. I think they need a chance to talk with the mayor and I’ll be there.”
It’s that same ripple effect that has Di Castri concerned as well.
“It’s more than just trashing vegetables. It’s all the little lives that had high expectations for their project.”
Ultimately the project has still fulfilled its goal of introducing students to the plant growing process, as well as watching their work grow before their very eyes.
“It taught them to work as a community in the project. It’s not just individual ownership, it’s the community.”
