Dawson Gardens aims to provide active learning opportunities to Dawson students through experience in planning, planting, and maintaining organic vegetable gardens on Dawson’s rooftops. The Dawson Gardens team contributes to community and environmental sustainability on campus by providing fresh, healthy, affordable and locally grown food to the Dawson Community. Finally, we contribute to food security and sovereignty on campus by providing affordable produce as well as supporting the food bank and other food security initiatives for students.

Workshops and student events leading up to and participation on our third annual Earth Day dig-in on April 22, 2016 at the gardens was an incredible success.  We hosted self-watering seed-starting workshops using recycled materials to give our plants a good head start for the season and planted over two days at two different sites with spring seeds and seedlings delivered with team support our organic gardening partner, Urban Seedling.  The launch of the gardens in 2016 represents both a time of continuity and change in the gardens, with two established garden sites and a reconstituted site launched in partnership with the Peace Centre and the First Peoples’ Centre.

Over 350 students, faculty and staff participated in learning about urban agriculture, organic gardening, and issues and topics related to our food system through this project thus far this year.  This includes 14 interns in the Advanced Topics Sociology of Food course who both designed several aspects of the spring and summer garden plan in addition to leading their peers in constructing self-watering containers, opening the garden for the season, planting organic produce, harvesting our first proceeds from the garden, and doubling the gardens’ size at the summer planting with all the goodies that thrive in Montreal’s hot summer months.  The learning opportunities through these sites has been both wide and deep, from students who have shown up to lend a hand for the day to students who have made their experiences and ideas the subject of their research in advanced coursework.

An incredible highlight from all of this has been the reconstitution of a previous gardens’ site in partnership with the Dawson Peace Centre and Dawson First Peoples’ Centre to establish a Three Sisters’ garden at Dawson.  This is a testament to the collaborative capacity at Dawson to leverage previous success and new relationships to produce meaningful community-driven, pedagogically-rich opportunities for Dawson students on campus.  The Three Sisters garden, based on the Iroquois creation story, is a companion planting strategy practices for thousands of years by indigenous communities across North America.  The site represents a space for students to learn about the contributions of indigenous knowledge in North America, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations for teaching and learning for indigenous and non-indigenous students, and the role that traditional knowledge and culture can play transforming our food system.  Students at workshops for seed-starting learned about the new site and the goals of the Three Sisters’ garden through presentations to two voluntary events and one collective workshop wherein two classes participated in starting squash seeds for the Three Sisters’ garden as well as other seeds for two of our gardens sites with the activity linked to course content and material.  Students on both the gardens team and from the First Peoples’ Centre not only prepared and planted the new site, but also took the next step to learn about the behind-the-scenes work in projects such as this by applying (successfully) for three grants to supplement funding as well as proposing and instituting new ideas for their management during the summer months.

Finally, and in addition, it is important to note that our students have mobilized their experience and knowledge both within and beyond the Dawson community.  One student volunteer, after logging well over 140 hours in the gardens, took the initiative to lead an advanced French course at Dawson in a lesson and workshop through the gardens.  One student is sharing her knowledge of the gardens as part of the Sustainable Campuses initiative at three college campuses in Mexico.  Finally, several Dawson internship students and volunteers shared their experiences and knowledge when two classes from Champlain College in Vermont visited us to learn about urban agriculture and our project.