Altadore School & Community Edible Garden

The mission of our Altadore School Edible Garden is to engage our students, teachers and school community in a supported, sustainable, organic food garden and outdoor classroom that will teach essential life skills and support academic learning. Our Edible Garden will provide our students hands-on experience and understanding of how the natural world sustains them, and will promote environmental s

tewardship and the social well-being of our school community in the world at large. Our garden will provide students a unique environment for cross-curricular and hands-on, experiential learning in the core subjects of math, science, social studies, language, art and music, while simultaneously growing the next generation of environmental stewards. The garden will also provide both our students and greater community the opportunity to experience the values of inter-generational experiences; creating, learning and working together, where all will gain valuable first-hand experiences of community and sustainability through working together to grow food organically and sustainably. The Altadore School & Community Edible Garden is Calgary’s first large-scale, school and community edible garden - or Edible Schoolyard. Our organic, ecological garden is located on a quarter-acre of public school land and includes raised-bed seed-to-table food gardening for 16 school classes, 32 community gardeners, and many common-garden areas including a large for-charity food garden, small fruit beds, orchard, herbs spirals, pollinator and perennial edible gardens, model food forests and two outdoor classrooms. We are almost at the end of our first, incredible learning and growing season, and are closer to realizing our goal of becoming an accessible, intergenerational community hub for hands-on edible education, localization, environmental and social stewardship; and a model for replication throughout Calgary and Alberta schools and communities. In the last 6 months, our garden engaged 402 Altadore School students in hands-on planting, growing and eating, educated 21 teachers, benefitted from more than 100 volunteers giving thousands of hours in stewardship, educated and engaged 62 community gardeners and families, donated over 600 pounds of food to local charities, entertained over 275 visitors of all ages, and mentored two local school organizations in similar projects. Interested in growing some awesome with us? We'd love to hear from you!