Growing Traditions

Great minds have been at work here. Ok, Keira from the Sustainable Living Arts School and I have been chatting.

Both of us develop workshops. However, we’d like to do something different when it comes to learning about sustainable arts.

Over the past years, she’s been experimenting with the learning party. It’s a get-together, but it’s casual. Usually it involves potluck food, which is always a very important thing. If you pay, it is on a “pay what you feel” basis. Most of all, a learning party is an opportunity for hands-on learning. Her most successful learning parties have involved an introduction from the instructor that goes as follows:

“Hi! Welcome to XYZ learning party. Let’s get started.”

And then the work begins.

I find the learning party idea exciting. I’m a very hands-on learner myself, meaning that I’m fairly hopeless at learning technical skills from a book. I can’t even learn them by watching. I must do them to learn them.

What does this mean for those who are participating in the Growing Traditions project? Well, for those participants who invite friends and family at the end of the summer, it means that the environment will be fun, casual, and we’ll have food. It also means that we’ll do something together. You don’t need to be a teacher to hold a learning party. It’s more like a work bee, assisted by those who might have a little more know-how than others.

I grew up eating raspberries warmed by the sun that shone down onto the vines in my grandma’s garden. I was scolded to put pea pods into the huge compost heap at the back of the garden. I grew my own vegetables, too, in the one foot patch in my parent’s front yard.

The elders in our community have abundant knowledge of gardening practices. My grandparents grew up on farms on the Prairies during the Depression. Growing food and composting were facts of life. But as this generation of gardeners retires to smaller homes, their knowledge is leaving us.

There is also a growing movement of people who are excited about growing their own food. The 100 Mile Diet created a huge public interest in local food. Maybe it’s the recession, or maybe it’s just time: new parents want to teach their children how to garden, and flower gardeners are starting to cultivate food as well.

This year, the Sustainable Living Arts School and the North Shore’s Edible Garden Project have come together to work on a small garden mentorship program that was recently funded by North Shore Health. The Growing Traditions project is a small pilot program designed to help us learn how elders and new food gardeners can share their knowledge. We would like to learn how garden mentorships work – and to get families growing food!

The project is looking for experienced gardeners on the North Shore who would like to mentor newer gardeners. We’re also looking for families to participate – newer gardeners who would both contribute to and benefit from a community connection with an elder gardener. It’s great if one in the pair has a garden space/community garden space, but that’s not required. We’re looking for elders and mentors who live close to each other, so that neither one of the pair needs to drive.

Do you know anyone who would like to do something like this? Participants would get together on their own schedule, likely each week, for the June to September period. They would share skills and hopefully connect in other ways, building a great community around gardening. Kids will be involved, so elder mentors need to be happy to have children in their garden space. We’ll have training and get-togethers for both the mentors and the new gardeners.

In the last two weeks of May, we’ll hold interviews of potential participants, and if there is great interest, we hope to continue the project in the 2010 gardening season with a larger group!

Interested participants or those with any questions are welcome to contact Tricia at 604-842-3251 or growingtraditions(at)slas.ca.