Kids have been getting their hands dirty this summer at the YM-YWHA, and nobody has scolded them for it.
In fact, the adults are encouraging them to plunge their hands into the soil.
They’re the approximately 80 children, ages four to 12, who attend the Friendly Faces Day Camp. All of them have participated in creating and maintaining the Jewish Community Garden, a pilot project of the Jewish environmental group Teva Quebec, supported by a Federation CJA Gen J grant.
The garden, on the Westbury Avenue side of the building between the current and former main entrances, is entirely in containers.
Co-ordinated by Aviva Bellman, the project is an outgrowth of Teva’s Jewish Eco-Leadership Training (JELT), a two-month program now in its third year designed to encourage environmental activism in Jewish CEGEP and university students. Bellman was director of the JELT program, whose goal is to raise awareness of the relevance of Judaism to environmental contemporary issues.
Jewish values were also central to the planning of the garden, although the day camp’s participants come from a variety of backgrounds. Some campers have special needs or language or behavioural challenges. Many are new immigrants.
The garden has three main sections. There’s a Havdalah garden, where a variety of herbs flourish. These relate to the fragrant spices that are central to the religious ceremony that marks the end of Shabbat. The flame of the Havdalah candle is suggested by a floral centrepiece.
Next is a Rainbow Garden evoking Noah’s Ark, where the spectrum of seven colours from red to violet is symbolized by different flowers and greenery.
The third section is devoted to vegetables, including tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and carrots.
“The main idea is to introduce gardening to children. Most don’t know where their food comes from,” Bellman explained. “If you ask them to draw a carrot nowadays, they draw a little baby carrot,” unaware that the real thing comes out of the ground with a green top and rough peel.
The children share in caring for the plants – weeding, watering and mixing in the compost to fertilize. They painted and arranged rocks in the ground to decorate the area.
Other activities, including music and singing, are on themes related to growing food.
They are fascinated by watching their plants grow, and thrilled that they can actually pick a leaf off of an herb to taste. As the season progresses, they are looking forward to making a salad from the vegetables.
“They really take pride in it,” said Y day camps director Marcy Kastner. “They bring their parents and say, ‘I planted this.’”
Bellman was born in Montreal, but left at age five for Los Angeles, where she grew up. She has been back in Montreal for the past two years. Her interest in organic gardening has developed naturally from her activism for social justice and her love of eating, she said. She came from an observant family and said Judaism has always underpinned her work. (Her maternal grandfather is Rabbi Sidney Shoham, rabbi emeritus of Beth Zion Congregation.)
Bellman hopes that at the end of the season, a Jewish school might take over the garden, bringing it indoors.