The SCF team, including Suzie Soman (President), Karen Clarke (Executive Director), and Pam Duynstee (Marketing/Project Manager), was recently treated to a tour of the Mamquam Edible School Yard (MESY) – a project created and managed by Squamish CAN (Climate Action Network).
This educational garden program is located at Mamquam Elementary School and includes a 20x40ft greenhouse, 30 raised beds, a garden shed, vertical garden, water taps, friendship benches, pollinator hotel, pollinator garden and a “Bee to Seed” pollination and seed saving/sale program.
Each classroom and local daycares care for a garden plot. During the growing season, students engage in hands-on learning including how to prepare the soil, seed, weed, transplant, mulch, water, harvest, and eat and preserve the bounty. During the winter, students participate in a variety of activities like packaging seeds they collected and cleaned in the fall to sell for fundraising, pickling, herbal salve making, and more.
Squamish CAN also operates a summer Market Stand at MESY (Tuesdays from 2:30-5:30pm), with all profits returning to the programming and maintenance of the gardens, and produce surplus donated to Squamish Helping Hands.
The SCF is proud to support Squamish CAN’s work throughout our community. In 2021 we awarded a grant to allow for increased food donations to Helping Hands, and necessary repairs to the MESY garden’s irrigation system.
Learn more about MESY and other programs by Squamish CAN here: www.squamishcan.net/edible-school-gardens.
More information on our 2021 Annual Grants recipients coming soon!
