Garden wellness is the name of the game at Winchester Public School in downtown Toronto, as students are planting radishes, spinach, parsley, carrots and mouse melons, too. In this large food garden, young people learn about everything from photosynthesis to nutrition to composting. As kindergarten student Sophie explains, ‘The worms poop and that’s how the dirt goes.’ However, the garden benefits the students’ bodies, as well as their minds.


 


According to Dr. Glenn Berall, chief of paediatrics at North York General Hospital, the wellbeing of many kids is at risk because don’t get all the fruit and vegetables they need. He notes, ‘I think a community garden at every school would be a wonderful idea. It develops the positive attitude for vegetables and the positive attitude for fruit potentially and helps the kids to understand where their food really comes from.’


 


Gerald Parsons, 17, is in his first year of horticulture at Bendale Business and Technical Institute, a high school in Toronto. He says that food tastes better when you know how to grow it, and this year he will be growing a vegetable rainbow of summer squash, hot peppers, tomatoes, purple onions, spicy mustard greens and kale. ‘I just like the way nature is,’ Parsons explains. ‘How it grows and what it does. How cool it is that it provides food for others to eat and live off of it. It’s pretty awesome’.


 


Co-ordinator Katie German comments that gardening doesn’t only serve as a complementary therapy, but also helps students see the big environmental picture. ‘They’re learning about food from seed to plate,’ says German. ‘All the way, the whole process through, how much work it takes to produce good healthy food. They’re really getting a sense of pleasure and joy in that good food and they’re also seeing a really clear connection between ecological health and the health of our food.’ She adds that students ‘get physical activity, physical exercise, they develop a positive relationship with food, with healthy food, and also a positive relationship with their own bodies because they are out here seeing what they’re bodies are capable of doing.’


 


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