The main project that we worked on in the 2013/14 school year was Aquaponics. This project was fun and we learned a lot, but we also learned how difficult it is to make a homemade system that does everything you want it to. Some of our systems work better than others, but none worked exactly as we wanted. We hope to work more on this in the future and try to perfect it.
In April, a local middle school called Maillard had a School Beautification Day to build their garden. A group of students from the Inquiry Hub went up to help with the building and planting. After a lovely day of helping and running round we were all very tired.
One of the things we have all been lucky enough to do us do is develop our public speaking skills. We have gone to two conferences, many middle schools in the area and also present to many other teachers and students the school and the garden. The presenting has helped us all, and we continue to learn and get better as we go long.
In June, we were honored to receive a Youth Environmental Award, from the city of Coquitlam for our work on our garden.
We wanted to get as many people involved in the garden as possible this year. We did this by putting small groups of volunteers in change of each of the garden beds. This got a lot more student involvement, and many students were excited to help.
From the help of the extra students over the summer, watering and maintaining the garden was a lot easier. We were able to maintain the garden and everyone only had to come once and week–once every two weeks. We are hoping that this will get even better next summer.