By Robyn Reimer, Manager – Integrated Learning, The Exploration Place Museum + Science Centre

The Urban Garden

The explorers urban garden: Gardening is learning

Jun 3, 2019 | 8:41 AM

Not many remember the original Museum building in Prince George, prior to the rebranding as The Exploration Place. The original building was built as a tourist attraction and was meant to be a loose reconstruction of Fort George. The Museum opened in 1972, finally providing a permanent housing for the museum collection, which had previously moved around from the old Civic Centre to the Chamber of Commerce, the library, and Council Chambers of the old City Hall.

Only three short years after it opened, a devastating fire destroyed the building, and almost the entire Museum collection with it. The fire left behind the concrete foundation, which was later fenced with chain-link, and used as outdoor storage for the Museum. This area had become somewhat of an eyesore in Prince George’s premier city park but has since blossomed into something both beautiful and educational.

In 2009, an idea came to fruition with the creation of the Explorers Urban Garden Project, a community teaching garden focusing on environmental gardening, recycling, composting, food security, ethnobotany, urban greening, and quality of life. The idea grew out of the realization that many people, especially children in urban areas, have become increasingly separated from their food sources. When the idea of the garden was first introduced to the children in the Fort George Explorers After-School program, some of the children thought food came only from the grocery store, not from the ground! Many of the children who did know where fruits and vegetables come from were still resistant or unwilling to try eating them.

This garden project has included the Museum’s preschoolers, after-school groups, and summer camp participants throughout the entire process—from planning, care and maintenance, harvest, food preparation, and preservation. Much of the garden’s proceeds go towards the after-school program’s Healthy Snack Initiative, encouraging healthy eating for children. The children are not only reconnecting with the origin of their food, but are much more likely to try eating something that they helped plant, care for, and harvest! This creates a sense of ownership, pride, and responsibility. The garden also teaches social responsibility by having the children donate part of their harvest to local food banks for people in need.

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In addition to being a museum, The Exploration Place is also the North’s only science centre, using every opportunity to educate youth and older generations alike in the sciences. The garden offers a great forum to do just that. Gardens are a wealth of scientific information, essentially like living laboratories. They are dynamic environments that engage all five senses, letting children observe, discover, experiment, nurture, and learn. Children learn best by doing, and when they can, quite literally, get their hands dirty, they become participants in the experience rather than merely observers. Children are curious by nature, and a garden gives them the chance to satisfy this innate curiosity by investigation and experimentation. Why are leaves green? What do plants need in order to survive and thrive? What kind of insects are friends to a garden, and which are not? Children learn about composting, natural pest control, the water cycle, and so much more, both through educational programs developed by staff and by simply investigating their surroundings. Being both a museum and science centre also provides a unique opportunity to show the historical significance of the development of scientific innovations like plant breeding. One way an educational garden can facilitate this is by growing a diverse assortment of varieties of the same plant, such as tomatoes. Not only are children mesmerized by the myriad of colours, shapes, and tastes of this seasonal staple, but they also have the opportunity to learn the importance of biodiversity. Through this simple exercise, children see that some of these varieties may grow better in the local environment than others, some may yield more and at different times, and some may have more resistance to disease.

In addition to scientific concepts, gardening can also teach math. How many seeds do we have? How far apart do we need to plant each carrot seed? How many tomatoes did we pick today? For very young children who are still in their most developmentally crucial years, gardening enhances fine motor development. Children are picking up tiny seeds, pulling weeds, and caring for seedlings, and developing their fine motor skills every step of the way.

Another aspect of the garden that is still in an exploratory planning phase is introducing an ethnobotanical component. The Exploration Place is located within Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, which encompasses the historic Lheidli T’enneh cemetery and sits on the original village site of Lheidli. An ethnobotanical garden would serve an important educational function linking history, culture, language, and traditional knowledge about local plants to the environment, and how traditional knowledge and science exist in symbiosis.

In addition to educational programs developed for the children in our programs, the Explorers Urban Garden is also open to the public, who also benefit from the interpretation and green space. Come on down to The Exploration Place this summer and experience all that the Explorers Urban Garden has to offer.