A Visit with the Dixon Dragonflies

Dixon Dragonflies working hard in the gardens.

Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2011

Every time I go out to Dixon Elementary School I am truly inspired.  Fiona and Chris are amazing teachers who have created the Dixon Dragonflies which meet weekly to work on the schoolyard gardens, bake, cook and do crafts related to environmental sustainability.  

On this day, when I visited, the library was abuzz as soon as I entered.  There were approximately 25-30 students and at least 10 parents eagerly waiting to participate.  Chris was taking a group of students down to the school kitchen to make homemade salsa with tomatoes from the school garden, and Fiona was preparing for some weeding and the laying down of some landscape fabric.  The excitement and eagerness in the classroom was amazing.  The students really wanted to be outside playing around in the dirt!

I first followed a group of students out into the gardens.  At Dixon, the gardens are very unique.  They are essentially divided up into two areas.  There is a set of raised beds in a secured courtyard and there is another more permanent garden at the back of the school.  The raised beds were built with the help of some of the local seniors three years ago.  Various classes have plots in the raised beds and there is a variety of veggies and flowers growing in this area.

At the back of the school, where the garden is larger, there are more vegetables.  Today, there were tomatoes, swiss chard, celery, curly kale, fennel, zucchini, and a little bit of lettuce. I can only imagine what the gardens looked like in the summer with all of the fresh veggies!!  The students eagerly helped to get rid of the weeds, find spiders and pick the tomatoes for the salsa.  There was even a quick debate about whether spiders were good for the garden.  It was decided that spiders are good, but kind of gross!

Simultaneously, Chris was with a small group of students in the kitchen.   When I went over to visit, the students were happily stirring their homemade salsa and getting the corn chips ready for eating.  The aroma of the sweet tomatoes were making the students drool!  They could hardly wait to go back to the library and get the salsa ready for their other classmates.  What a great example of the farm to table concept. The tomatoes that were used for the salsa were barely half an hour old! 

Many schools start Green Teams, but they slowly die away and fade into the background.  The reason that this club is successful is due to the dedication of Chris and Fiona.  You can see and feel their passion for the students and the gardens.  Their dedication is infectious and there is a climate of care.  You can see that the actions of being a global citizen are modeled and I can see that these students are our future environmental stewards.

Three questions that came out of the visit:

1.  Where can we access plants for winter gardening and what's best to grow in the winter in Richmond? 

2.  What's the best way to set up a summer watering system?  A timer system was set up, but it was disconnected over the summer?

3.  Where can we get some more soil for the gardens?

Thank you to Chris and Fiona for inviting me to visit the Dixon Dragonflies.