December Interactions – Ontario Society for Environmental Education

interactions header december

Bondar Challenge for Schools
Connect youth with nature through the lens of a camera. By The Roberta Bondar Foundation

Fusion Landscaping ®
Creating an environmentally friendly garden. By Gino Piscelli

Extending your Growing Season
Using cold frames to grow cool-weather plants and getting a jump start on the growing season. By Nazreen Subhan

Upcoming Events

Teacher Resources

The Roberta Bondar Founation

Bondar Challenge for Schools

The Bondar Challenge is a nature photography program developed by Dr. Roberta Bondar. Schools, camps and outdoors centres from across North America participate in the Bondar Challenge each year. The goal of the program is to connect youth with nature through the lens of a camera. With camera in tow, students are able to slow down and appreciate the natural world around them.

Teachers are able to shape the Bondar Challenge to fit their schedule and student needs in a classroom, school club or field trip setting. The Roberta Bondar Foundation provides lesson plans, learning materials, online resources, and cameras for loan to the classes participating. After instructional guidance from their teacher, students will be challenged to use what they have learned, and their imaginations, to explore the environment around them.

boy with camera

Participants will submit their favourite photograph along with a GEM Card (artist’s statement) to the Bondar Challenge for an opportunity to be recognized in this national school contest. Winners will also have the chance to have their photographs featured alongside Dr. Roberta Bondar’s traveling photography exhibition.

The Foundation has also teamed up with My Class Needs, a Canadian crowdfunding platform for teachers to raise funds for school projects, to ensure all schools have the opportunity to participate in the Bondar Challenge. Visit www.myclassneeds.ca to find out more about this great organization.

Teachers interested in participating can register on our website or contact our coordinator (coordinator@therobertabondarfoundation.org) with any questions. Applications will be received on a rolling basis as classes can participate in the challenge during the Fall and/or Spring challenges.

We’re also very social. You can find us on these sites:

Website: www.therbf.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRobertaBondarFoundation
Instagram: https://instagram.com/robertabondarfoundation/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RBondarFdn

Carling Watson
Programs Coordinator
coordinator@therobertabondarfoundation.org
(226) 456-3555

Gino Piscelli

Fusion Landscaping®

Many individuals want to create sustainable gardens but don’t know where to start. Fusion Landscaping® is a trend in landscaping and garden design that creates textured, colourful gardens using eco-chic flowers, plants and trees. Offered by the Region of Peel, this environmentally-friendly form of landscaping is easier to maintain than traditional gardens, helping you use less water.

Fusion Gardens include the following elements:

Colourful perennials, planted in groups to provide colour and visual impact
A range of ornamental grasses for texture and movement
Trees and shrubs that give height and shade
A thick layer of mulch to help retain moisture in the soil and minimize weeds
Areas of hardscaping to allow your outdoor space to be walked through, sat in and enjoyed

Fusion principles can be added to existing gardens to help save water and money:

Fusion is about the right plant for the right place. Take note of both plant requirements and area for planting. Quite often plants are used in an area not suited for their growing conditions which results in over-watering to compensate.
Adjust your lawn mower to a higher setting. The longer grass will shade roots, help retain moisture in the soil and crowd out weeds.
Water in the early morning to help reduce the amount of water lost to evaporation.
Install a soaker hose or drip line. Soaker hoses and drip lines add water slowly to the garden, supporting healthy root systems and can be covered by mulch.
Place traditional sprinklers in a position to avoid watering hard surfaces like driveways and patios.
Use a broom to clear driveways, sidewalks and patios.
Have irrigation systems fitted with a rain sensor and smart controller. Rain sensors save water by shutting off your system when it rains. Smart controllers use local weather and landscape conditions to tailor watering schedules to actual conditions on the site.
Use of compost provides similar benefits as mulch with water retention, while also fertilizing the garden. This eliminates the need for fertilizers.

The top Fusion plants to add to your gardens:

Colourful Perennials

daylilly

Purple coneflower
Stonecrop
Daylily
Coral Bells
Blazing Star
Silvermound

Textured Grasses

textured grass

Karl Foerster
Blue Fescue
Fountain Grass

Appealing Shrubs

dogwood

Boxwood
Diabolo Ninebark
Alternate-leaved Dogwood
Shade Trees
Bur Oak
Red Maple

Visit watersmartpeel.ca for step-by-step instructions to help build your own Fusion Garden. The steps include recommended plants, how to estimate the cost of your garden, as well as maintenance practices for your finished outdoor space.

Nazreen Subhan

Extending your Growing Season

Summer is over and so is the growing season for many fruits and vegetables. Cold frames though, allow you to continue to grow and harvest food during the fall and winter as well as get a head start on next year’s growing season by allowing you to harden off plants that are started indoors. A cold frame uses the energy of the sun to create a microclimate that low-growing cool weather plants can thrive in while giving plants a protective barrier from frost and snow.

Gardening is a wonderful way to link students from an urban environment to a rural one that is impacted by environmental challenges such a climate change, lack of pollinators, shifting of the growing season, pollution, soil and water quality. Building a simple cold frame is a project anyone can undertake.

Types of Cold Frames

Cold frames vary in size and style but can be added to both regular and above ground gardens.

cold frame2

Slanted Cold Frame

Above ground cold frames are easy to make and the top can be made from old windows, doors, plexiglass or clear plastic. The top can be easily hinged and propped open to allow venting.

cold frame 3 Hoop Style Cold Frame

The hoop style of cold frame is very versatile and can be adapted to either in ground or above ground gardens. Using items found at any hardware store you can place this simple cold frame around an existing garden.

The Build

To build your own hoop cold frame you must purchase the following supplies:

¾” PVC piping (5 feet in length)
metal stakes
curved brackets (only when attaching to a frame)
6mm thick vapour barrier plastic
hack saw
screws
hammer

tools Start by using a hammer to drive a metal stake into the ground (approximately 12” into the ground). Insert one end of the PVC pipe over it and push into the ground (approximately 6 inches down), then secure with a bracket and screws if you are attaching it to a frame. Place the opposite end of the PVC in the ground by repeating the process again. The PVC pipes should be placed 2 feet apart. The height of the cold frame determines how tall the plants can be. The foliage of the plants inside a cold frame should never touch the plastic because it will transfer the cold to your plants. The maximum size of any cold frame should be between 3-4 feet in width to make it manageable.

Take your roll of 6mm plastic and secure one end with either 2″ x 2″ lumber or bricks to keep the plastic in place and then roll the plastic over the frame. Secure the opposite end in the same manner. This will leave you ends that must be gathered and clamped together. You should not seal the ends as the temperature inside a cold frame can get well above 90 F. This allows the excess heat to be vented. Place a soil thermometer in the ground to monitor the temperature in the cold frame.

Types of Plants

A cold frame is not a green house, meaning that they cannot house tropical or grow warm weather plants. Many plants that we think of as annuals are actually perennials (tomato, eggplant, cucumber, pepper, etc.) but they cannot survive frost or winter temperatures. These are known as tender plants. A cold frame insulates plants from the cold and offers protection for some tender plants. You must however cut back these plants to allow them to conserve energy and become dormant for the winter. In the spring they will start growing again and you will get a head start on the growing season.

The best type of plants to use are low-growing, cool weather plants.

spinach1

Sorrel
Scallions
Water Celery
Asparagus
Spinach
Broccoli
Kale
Arugula
Garlic
Cauliflower
Leeks

Starting Seedlings Early

Cold frames can also be a great way to start seedlings and harden them off. Hardening off a plant is done by placing it outside in the Spring for increasingly longer periods of time, over a week or two, before planting it in the ground. If you have a cold frame, you can simply place the seedlings inside and open one end for short periods of time to allow the plant to gradually get accustomed to cooler temperatures. This allows you to plant your seedlings weeks earlier than during a typical growing season which requires you to wait until mid-May to June before the last frost warning has passed. You can start your seedling up to six weeks earlier, and by hardening off your plants they can be easily planted without any transplant shock.

Once you build your first cold frame you will wonder how you went so long without one. It is a great tool to produce food year round and can create many learning opportunities. A year round garden keeps students invested in the school garden because there is always something to do and an earlier growing season means there will be multiple times during the year when you and your students can harvest your plants.

For additional information on cold frames, see the resources below:

https://edibleschoolyard.org/sites/default/files/Cold-Frames-Tunnels-and-Greenhouses_Annies-Homegrown.pdf

http://www.hws.edu/fli/pdf/cold_frame.pdf

http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/pdfs/garden_for_all_seasons.pdf

http://www.motherofahubbard.com/10-vegetables-more-cold-hardy-than-kale/