Who are we?

We are a group of 3 students at the Inquiry HUB school who are in charge of the garden at the school and make up the Green Inquiry group. We do projects involving the environment.

From left: Alan, Hannah, Sophia, Shauna, and Nicole

In September 2012 ,Shauna, a previous student, started to develop the idea of a garden at the school. Later, two other students joined in, Sophia and Hannah, the three of them planned and executed the building of a community garden at the school in April 2013. They applied for a grant to build the Millside Inquiry garden through the World Wildlife Fund. In December 2012 they found out that they had received the grant which was very exciting for everyone involved. To read more about the grant, click here.

In their second year at Inquiry Hub, we worked on an Aquaponics project (which wasn’t entirely successful). And also maintained the garden, although a little less intensively than the first year. This year, Nicole also became a part of the Green Inquiry group.

In their third year and my second year, we received another grant for the beautification of the IHub garden. This involved putting in benches and picnic tables and creating a mural to decorate the garden space. We also started to create a Garden Manual, in which we can put what we’ve learned into something that can be used by future Inquiry Hub students, and also students and teachers from other schools who are interested in creating a community garden. In April 2015 Inquiry Hub won the Ken Spencer award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, and our school received $7,000. One of the things that the school purchased which that money was a kitchen unit. You can read more about the Kitchen unit at IHub, here. Our group expanded again this year to include Alan, Shauna’s brother, and our friend.

Last year was Shauna, Sophia, and Hannah’s final year at Inquiry Hub. We continued the garden manual project, maintaining the garden and making it better. Alan attempted to create a vertical aquaponics system, which did not completely work but we are learning from out mistakes.

This year is my (Nicole) final year at IHub, we are maintaining the garden, as well as creating a vertical garden. With the possibility of the foods students using the produce for their course. We plan on updating this blog as much as we can to create a digital version of what we have done and in the hopes that other people will be able to learn from our mistakes and make their own gardens.

We hope that you continue to read our blog and find out what we are doing to make our school a more environmentally friendly place. If you have questions or suggestions, please email us at greeninquiry@gmail.com

~Nicole & Alan