Westwood Elementary School, Prince George, B.C.

A School Ground Transformed

Over the past five years, students and staff at Westwood Elementary School in Prince George, B.C., have transformed their school ground with support from Toyota Evergreen Learning Grounds and the expertise of Learning Grounds consultant Dolores Altin. The entire community— students, teachers, staff, parents, friends and neighbours — has come together to transform their school grounds into a beautiful, culturally significant area in which to work, study, sketch, play games, have fun or simply be. The result is an outdoor classroom and aboriginal garden that is the perfect setting for teaching ecological awareness of the surrounding area.

Against a backdrop of the destruction of local pine forests as a result of pine beetle infestation, this transformation has helped students develop an appreciation for the flowers, shrubs and trees in their urban landscape. Westwood Elementary School piqued the interest of Prince George Citizen journalist Frank Peebles in an article last March that describes these magical school grounds as a "garden paradise."

Diane Sales, a Teacher-Librarian/PE Prep Teacher at Westwood has been an instrumental force behind the school's transformation. Despite numerous challenges — everything from lack of storage space to an unusually late and cold spring — there have been many rewards, including winning a local garden contest and the tremendous engagement of staff and students.

In the end, Diane says that "despite all of the difficulties that arose, the project has given all of us — administration, students, teachers and community — a great sense of pride and satisfaction. The students love to dig and create new areas, float bark mulch down the collection stream after a rainfall, play 'stepping stone tag' through the garden and watch the plants grow... Many evenings, community members can be seen strolling through the garden, looking at the stepping stones, checking out the plant growth and sitting on our benches. The local daycares have picnic lunches on the benches and look at the plants. We LOVE our garden."

The garden thrives in part because maintenance is fun: Students happily search for the longest weed, a garden club uses a giant 300-foot hose to water on their lunch hour and after school, and recently a group of students won $2,000 at the 2009 British Columbia Green Games with a presentation that told the garden's story—with the prize money buying an outdoor chess table. Plans for 2010 include a blessing ceremony for the Aboriginal garden and new plantings.