What’s growing on here? Garden-based pedagogy in a concrete jungle

Abstract

This study explores experiences of a learning garden project at an urban faculty of education. The project opens a space for the theoretical and practical consideration of garden-based pedagogies and their influence on university students, educators, and the community as a whole. The learning garden was created by a small group of initial teacher education and graduate students and faculty volunteers. The group came together through shared interests in growing the theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical work carried out at the institution, through the opening of a unique and organic context for teaching and learning. This paper follows a duoethnographic approach as it traces the garden’s growth, our experiences with and in the garden, and the effects of the garden over its first year. Through dialogue, anecdotes and interactions, we explore themes that have grown from the research and garden’s growth, creating multiple, often unexpected, dimensions of praxis. We also unearth the complexities and tensions of institutional relationships as the garden interrupted norms and opened up spaces for multiplicity, alterity and difference in pedagogy, allowing us to revisit, review and renew our work in our institution’s approach to environmental education.

Keywords:

• learning garden
• duoethnography
• aesthetic
• affect
• community
• teacher education

Notes

1. The speakers, H, S and E, are the three authors.

2. The Bloor Street Project consisted of two community building events organized by one of the authors and visiting environmental educator and researcher in a neighbouring parkette. The first event included a guerilla planting in the parkette, poetry reading and cupcake sale, the proceeds of which began our fundraising for the OISE/UT Community Learning Garden.

3. This meeting was with the Facilities and Operations staff at the university, early in the planning process. The negative reaction to the term ‘community garden’, based on the extensive conversation, seemed connected to the history of the space, which included a connection to the local aboriginal community as well as a gathering place for vagrants and for drug dealers in the past. The staff made it clear that they did not want us recreating a space where people would come to buy and sell drugs, and even had stipulations on how high the plants might be allowed to grow. They had a negative reaction to the idea of planting any food products for the same reason, it seems, and thus anything edible that we planted was not advertised as such in our public documents.