Category: Service

The garden has grown massively in the past term. We are preparing to deliver orders that go to other parts of campus. We have learned much about what works best for each plant and what doesn’t.

It feels amazing to have knowledge on how to grow, take care of, and propagate plants. I took the challenge of committing to taking care of certain plants and being responsible for them. It is very satisfying to watch everything grow.

It is all very relevant when thinking about really how our food is made,  not just that, but the specific processes that each plant follows in order to grow. I learned that soil is extremely important, and good soil isn’t available all over the world. That is an issue in which we should all be involved in, our survival depends on it at the end. Working with plants can certainly teach you how to be responsible and to care for issues such as the one I mentioned previously.

By engaging in this type of activity, I feel like I can give back to the school, and I feel like I am gaining skills to give back to a larger community after this. I can identify in which way is this topic relevant and how does if affect our local community, I consider being involved into this activity as being socially responsible in a small scale.

For the next season, things will be running down more smoothly, we will receive more orders and we will all have previous knowledge on the caring and propagation of plants.

These past few sessions have been interesting. Our seedlings have been growing fantastically. I learned how to properly propagate many types of plants such as different herbs, chilis, tomatoes, pumpkins, etc. We have been experimenting and learning in which ways can plants grow and in which do they grow best.

It has been amazing for me to see the effort and thought you have to put into making one plant grow. It is very intriguing to think of the ways that our food or the plants our products are made of are produced, and the ways in which these can be more sustainable.

We have also been pretty mindful of things such as water consumption, managing compost quantities, and the most organised and sustainable way of using pots. We have talked about ideas of making the garden consume less resources.

I’ve always liked plants, I just got a rosemary which is growing amazingly, and a smaller plant of which I don’t know the name. The latter fell from my window and as I couldn’t go rescue it until the next day, it spent a whole day outside and died.

Anyway, I’ve always liked plants and I never did really have that much experience growing and taking care of plants. I will develop new skills in this activity (LO2), as I don’t have much experience and will learn pretty much everything about taking care of plants and propagating them.

In this activity, I will engage with an issue of global significance (LO6). I think growing plants, especially food, is nowadays very underrated; I am amazed now at the rate that many plants grow, but it really takes a lot of time and effort for a whole fruit to grow. I didn’t feel like a properly functioning human being without knowing how to grow my own food. I really care about the environment. I think food availability is a matter that concerns all of us. Good soil quality and optimal growing conditions are factors that I didn’t take into consideration before, and many people still don’t; most of us don’t know where our food comes from.

I will have to recognise and consider the ethic implications of my actions (LO7). One example can be in the type of materials that we use in the garden, we need to think about where do they come from or think about the effect on the environment of us propagating a certain type of plant.

I really learned a lot and enjoyed taking care of my new plants. So I joined the Urban Gardening Propagation Service in school.  In the service, we work with gardens all over the school to provide plants to be grown. This service will run on every Thursday.