Char-Lan’s Green Team recieves UCDSB Trustee Innovation Award | Cornwall Standard Freeholder
WILLIAMSTOWN — The Green Team at Char-Lan District High School has been very busy since the club’s formation in 2016. The group of students have been tending several gardens around their school, as well as a 39-tree fruit orchard, and even a living wall.
The club’s work has been noticed by the Upper Canada District School Board and last week, the Char-Lan Green Team was given one of the board’s Trustee Innovation Awards.
“Getting this award is pretty cool. I was pretty surprising,” said Emma Ahrensfield, Green Team member.
The Green Team got its start as a group of students who were interested in doing some hands-on gardening activities, but the program really took off.
The club managed its living wall, which is an indoor hydroponic farm that is built vertically to sit against a wall. The apparatus allows students to continue growing plants during the winter. Some of the plants grown outside during the summer were transplanted to the wall and had their nutrients closely monitored by the students.
The students also managed several outdoor gardens which included flowers, fruits and vegetables. They tutored kindergartners about gardening and had a specialist from Cornwall come in to teach them about the proper pruning of fruit trees.
“We actually took a tree that was knocked over and no longer growing fruit and used it as an example of how to prune the trees. Then we went out into the orchard with our tools and pruned the trees and cared for them to get the maximum amount of fruit,” said Heather Grant, the teacher who supervises the club.
The produce from the gardens and orchard has been used by Char-Lan’s free breakfast program.
Members of the club such as Faith Pilon note that part of their Green Team’s success is that Char-Lan is a rural school where many of the students come from an agricultural background. So much so that the club has gained quite a reputation.
“I have gone to three different schools and I’ve always been interested in the Green Teams there, but I found the ones at the other schools aren’t as advanced and don’t do as many activities as we do at Char-Lan,” said Pilon. “I heard about the Green Team from people I know, so when I transferred here, I wanted to join right away.”
The Char-Lan Green Team’s next big project will be to plant 75 Liberation tulip bulbs provided to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of The Netherlands by Canadian troops at the end of the Second World War. The Dutch embassy is providing the bulbs, while the club, the Williamstown Green Thumbs and the members of the Royal Canadian Legion in Lancaster will plant them next month.