Biodiversity

An intricate web of diverse life forms thrives in school food gardens that are home to a multitude of coexisting wild and cultivated plants, pollinating insects, birds, small mammals, worms, soil organisms, and sometimes even toads. Besides the rich opportunities for teaching and learning, biodiversity provides many benefits to the school food garden.

Diversity = resilience: Unlike monoculture—the practice of devoting large areas of land to a single crop—diversified agriculture means growing a wide variety of plants all mixed together. One of the advantages of this is reduced susceptibility to disease and pests. Monoculture is a fragile system because one plant-specific pest (for example the corn-borer) can attack and destroy an entire one-commodity crop – whereas if you’re growing many different plants, the loss of one won’t mean losing the whole harvest. Also, since monoculture is threatened by such pests, it tends to be heavily dependent on chemical pesticides: small-scale and diversified food production, on the other hand, can be can be more successful using organic (i.e. chemical-free) methods. Inter-planting a diverse range of foods deters pests by making it more difficult for them to spread from plant to plant. We use special plant combinations, known as companion planting, to improve plant health and production.

Seed diversity: Today, far fewer varieties of fruits and vegetables are available in the supermarkets than there were a few decades ago. The mass-produced varieties that dominate the market have been selected mostly for their high yields, ability to travel well or endure storage for great lengths of time. Children growing up today tend to think that apples are only red or green, tomatoes are beefsteak or cherry, and that mint is a flavour of candy. They have difficulty imagining purple carrots, sweet cherry tomatoes with stripes, white eggplants or round lemon cucumbers We’ve grown seven varieties of basil in one season, and six different flavours of mint—just a couple of the treasures of the school food garden. Preserving seed diversity is valuable as a teaching tool and preserving a living genetic resource.

Pollinators and their habitat: Alongside the food plants we grow for people to eat, we also grow many plants that provide food for the butterflies, bees, beetles, wasps, moths and other pollinating insects. Pollinator habitat is essential since one-third of the food plants we eat depend on insect pollination to reproduce. Since different plants bloom at different times of the year, by encouraging biodiversity we provide a sustained food source for pollinators all season long.

Biodiversity and kids: Most children are totally fascinated by bugs, grubs and butterflies. Their experience with insect life in the garden helps them to appreciate the vital role that these tiny creatures play in the health of the larger environment. Hands-on learning about biodiversity helps children understand the symbiosis between plants, insects and other living things. Another benefit of growing a diversity of foods is that the different textures, colours and flavours available in the gardenhave the potential to attract students’ attention. For example, children who don’t like red tomatoes may be interested to taste one that’s yellow, green or purple.

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Content last modified on April 16, 2010, at 08:27 PM EST