Allenby Garden

Table of contents

Table of contents ...........................................................................Pg. 1
Introduction ...................................................................................Pg. 2
History .............................................................................................Pg. 3
Flora/Invasive plants/Garden Zones .........................................Pg. 4
Fauna ..............................................................................................Pg. 5
Uses of the garden ........................................................................Pg. 6
Ways to care for and preserve the space ...................................Pg. 7
Ways to get there ..........................................................................Pg. 8
Where the space is located .........................................................Pg. 9
Glossary ............................................................................Pg. 10 -11
Sources .........................................................................................Pg. 12
Conclusion ....................................................................................Pg. 13

Introduction

Our garden used to be a patch of unused land, stepped in and not taken care of. Now it is full of vibrant colors, smell, and most of all, life. We are very grateful for it because it is an outdoor classroom to teach children the ways of nature.

This is in the North side garden. As you can see, it has lots of cedar, which is one of the plants from the indigenous medicine wheel.

History

The garden was created in 2015, about 4 years ago, by the Outdoor Classroom Collective. The group was made up of teachers and parents who had dreams of a future for their unused garden. Their dream was to have a new garden that would be taken care of and used. To make their dream come true, they needed money. So, they asked the city of Toronto for a grant of $10,000. The students and teachers at our school helped grow our garden. Some of the classes, including our teachers were out there for hours every day to help grow the garden.

This photo shows students smelling some sage in the rooftop garden.

Flora - Invasive - Garden Zones

At our school garden, we have very beautiful plants like sage, sweet grass, cedar and many more amazing plants. But there were a lot of dog strangling vines and lily of the valley. And when they were digging to plant plants they found a lot of orange lilies. And still to this day, we keep some of the invasive plants in our garden for learning purposes.
Here is a list of some of the plants from the different zones:
Forest Garden (In the forests in Ontario, it’s very shady therefore these plants need less sun and they are native)
Common Milkweed
Wild Ginger
Wild Strawberry
e.t.c

The metal stock container zone consists of:
Berry bladder fern
Blood root
Chickweed
Bottle brush, grass
Wild Ginger
Milkweed
We also have a rooftop garden which has 3 wooden containers. The 1st has herbs, the 2nd has pollinators and the 3rd has veggies.

Here's an example of a garden container with a student drawing the plants. As you can see, Toronto is very cold and snowy during the winter.

Fauna

We have a lot of different animals from squirrels to birds to raccoons. The animals in outdoor learning space are raccoon during the night, squirrels climbing in the trees, skunks wandering around and birds eating from the bird feeder that some teachers and students at our school class made to help feed the birds.

Sometimes at night a family of skunk come and visit.

This is a photo of a monarch caterpillar that is eating milkweed.

This photo is when a squirrel was looking for food in our garden.

Uses for the garden

The garden is used as an outdoor classroom, to learn about nature and the environment. There is also a rooftop classroom where there is a smaller garden with vegetables and fruits and it is also used as a learning space for us. Not only is it used for learning, but we also walk in the garden to admire the plants and talk about different species of plants.

These photos are both of the rooftop garden. Classes come and learn about the many plants.

Ways to care and preserve the nature

How our school cares for the garden is we have a club in the spring that plants more plants and they help water the plants. Our school also gets rid of the dog strangling vines. They get rid of the dog strangling plants because they become big and the vines circle the other plants and kill the other plants. We also have parents and teachers who volunteer to water the garden in the summer when the students are away on vacation.

This is a photo of students at our school digging new holes for some new plants.