Budding gardeners dig into new life skill at N.B. workshop

Getting a jumpstart on the season ahead, a handful of budding youths dug into a new life skill Wednesday.

The Municipality of Tantramar held a Crafts and Seed Starting workshop in Sackville, N.B., as part of their March break activities.

“We were hoping to teach the kids the importance of gardening and how that can be sustainable for them and how they can learn to do their own gardens at home,” said Jessica Wilson, Tantramar program and special events coordinator.

“I feel like this is something that is super important for the kids because they don’t typically get to learn things like this in school anymore and because of that, kids grow up and they just think ‘Oh, I have to go to the grocery store to get my food,’ so I’m hoping that by doing workshops like this that we’ll be able to teach the kids they can do it themselves and they don’t have to rely on the grocery store all the time.”

There was a handful of garden-related crafts including making a butterfly scene out of uncooked pasta noodles, paper flowers from traces of your hands, and a rainbow.

The star of the workshop was planting their own seeds to take home.

“I planted some wildflowers and some lettuce,” said 10-year-old Moya Craik.

She has a garden at home that’s full of different fruit and knows how important it is.

“It’s good to have gardens all around the world so butterflies and birds and bees can live and make honey,” she said.

Participants ranged from four to 11 years old and had five different vegetables to choose from and two different types of flowers.

“It’s super important to teach them when they’re young so that way it’s something that gets in their brains and it continues on throughout their lifetime,” said Wilson.

“It’s something that I started doing with my grandmother when I was super young, she had a garden outback so we also used to go and help her garden, if we were there for super we’d go out to the garden and get the lettuce for supper, the carrots, all this different stuff.”

Four-year-old Edwin Martin planted carrots and tomatoes with his mom.

“I had a very fun day because I was planting seeds,” he said.

While his favourite thing to eat out of the garden is cucumbers, it isn’t the food that Edwin likes the most about gardening.

“I like to help my mom,” he said.

Sisters Alex and Gabby Hamilton have been gardening for a few years now with their mom.

“My mom grows a lot of stuff like tomatoes, peas, she recently started growing eggplant,” said Alex.

She says they both have their own garden plot at home.

“Garden strawberries are better than store brought strawberries,” said Gabby. “They’re the best.”

This year they have big plans for their gardens and this workshop gave them a jumpstart at planting.

“I’m hoping to grow spinach, peas, carrots, tomatoes,” said Alex, who made a soup out of all her garden goodies last year.

“Cherry tomatoes, lettuce, spinach that actually works,” added Gabby.

“Last year I planted cherry tomatoes and spinach, but it had bolted before I could pick it,” she said.

The event also featured the non-edible side of gardening.

“For the flowers I went with sunflowers and wildflowers,” said Wilson. “The wildflowers are huge to make sure that the bees have something that they can pollinate and it keeps them alive the most.”

“It will clean the carbon dioxide out of the air so we can breath and not be unhealthy,” said Moya.

Wednesday’s seeds will have to stay inside on a window ledge that receives lots of sunlight until the end of May when the frost is finally out of the ground. 

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