Garden Club
2022

Above: A group of students hang out in the North-Grand Garden after the bell rings

Arriba: Un grupo de estudiantes se reúnen en el jardín North-Grand después de que sonó la campana

Garden Club: Fun and Food Sovereignty at North-Grand!

Inquiry Questions: What can we learn together through cultivating and tending plants? What kinds of joy and agency can we gain through producing our own food and medicinal plants for ourselves and our community? How can we activate the green space at North-Grand in order to benefit the North-Grand community? 

2022 is CAPE Garden Club's first year! You can see our Summer 2022 activities here. 

Club de Jardín: diversión y soberanía alimentaria en North-Grand

Pregunta de Consulta: ¿Qué podemos aprender juntos cultivando y cuidando plantas? ¿Qué tipo de alegría y albedrio podemos obtener a través de la producción de nuestros propios alimentos y plantas medicinales para nosotros y nuestra comunidad? ¿Cómo podemos activar el espacio verde en North-Grand para beneficiar la comunidad de North-Grand?

¡El año 2022 es el primer año del Club de Jardín de CAPE!

Garden Club is: Andrea Suzao (even from afar!), Citlalli Resendiz, Juan Martinez, Adriana Ocampo, Kimberly Ramos, Joanna Rivera, Maria Garcia, Yaretzy Ocampo, Elizabeth Cazares, Ethan Zarate, Melissa Lopez, Gabrielle Knight, Josue Cervantes, Othello Thomas, Jazmin Reyes, Ivan Orona, Amira Vilatuna, Evelyn Sanchez, Adriana Nelson, Jimena Cuautle, Dahiann Osorio, Sanna Sumba, Elizabeth Brito, Kenya Benitez, Kaely Solano, Liliana Ocampo, Brianna Sizemore, David Silva, Yasmin Moyett, Sebastian Garcia, Carlos Camacho and Isaac Cervantes.


Our students bring a wealth of ancestral knowledge, curiosity, innovation, and passion to growing plants. Many of our students are engaged in other extra-curricular activities on campus, including the Culinary program, CAPE Cooking Club, Allied Health, the Student Voice Committee, the STEAM Maker Space, After School Matters, Visual Arts, Athletics, Band, and more. They demonstrate that gardening is beneficial for everyone!


CAPE Garden Club is led by North-Grand Faculty Ms. Welsh, Ms. Hetzel, and CAPE Teaching Artist Kayla Anderson with help from and in collaboration with Mr. Bawany, Ms. Borne, Ms. Marron, Ms. DeVaughn, Dr. Chappell, Mr. DeRobertis, Mr. Cantor, Mr. Van-Gelder, Ms. Abid, Ms. Barrow, and Principal Feltes.



Garden Club Goals:


Note for CPS Schools: Are you hoping to start a garden? Checkout CPS Farm to School and subscribe to the CPS School Garden Newsletter for resources!

How We Started

The seed for CAPE Garden Club germinated (you know we love our plant metaphors!) on the first day of CAPE After-School clubs in the Fall of 2021. While gathered in the garden space in front of the school, some students asked why the space had been abandoned, and expressed a desire for a club where they could cultivate and contribute to the garden. After consulting with many faculty who had used the garden in the past, we realized it was going to be a huge effort! For many years, the beds had been left to rot and the weeds to proliferate, to point that it was now too much work for any one faculty member or class to tackle. 


Inquiry to Action! - Thankfully, plans to revitalize the school garden were already in the works! In February 2022, CAPE joined the gargantuan efforts of North-Grand students, faculty, and staff in revitalizing the garden space in front of North-Grand High School through the STEAM Inquiry to Action Service Learning Project.


Our efforts are possible thanks to the STEAM Inquiry to Action Service Learning Project, a collaboration between Chemistry, Culinary, and Environmental Geology classes at North-Grand. The STEAM Inquiry to Action Service Learning Project was initiated and is led by Ms. Marron’s junior Culinary class, Ms. DeVaughn’s senior Environmental Geology class, and Dr. Chappell and Mr. DeRobertis’ Chemistry classes; the Student Voice Committee, Black Student Union, and STEAM Specialist Ms. Borne. The STEAM Inquiry to Action Service Learning Project is driven by the following call to action question: How can we identify issues, spread awareness, and demand accountability regarding access to nutrient-rich food and life-sustaining resources connected to the health concerns of the Black and Brown people living in nutrient-deficient communities in Humboldt Park?

Above: Slide by Dr. Chappell. Below: Campus Love Fridge built by the Student Voice Committee and Black Student Union. In the future, fresh produce from the North-Grand Garden will be made available in the North-Grand Love Fridge.

Our goal is to support the efforts of North-Grand students, faculty, and staff to ensure that North-Grand students have access to, and agency over, a thriving school garden for the foreseeable future!

The Nitty Gritty
So what has Garden Club been up to from February - June of 2022?


Students survey the garden in February to come up with ideas for what they want to see there in the future. 

Surveying the Snow - Chicago has a short growing season, so we got straight to work in February while the snow was still on the ground: surveying the garden, planting seeds, and dreaming of Spring. On our first visit, we took a walk through the garden and students dreamed up things they want to see there in the future: a lily pond, fruit trees, a lunch-time feast of fruits and vegetables, a medicinal garden, and flowers galore! 

In addition to plants, we dreamed up an outdoor classroom, a meditation maze, picnic tables for students to gather at, and furniture to relax on, like porch swings and hammocks.

Dreams of reviving the garden spread beyond the bounds of Garden Club and the Inquiry to Action project. Students throughout North-Grand advocated for on-campus green space, including the garden and courtyard. The poster to the left was made by a student on the Student Voice Committee after talking with students in Garden Club. It reads "Mission: Revive the Garden - Our Garden looks Dead. Missing: Plants, Tables, Benches, Lights, Water fountain. Problem: The garden outside looks dead and so does the school. How will students benefit? They will be more motivated to come to school. They will have a place to relax." 

Prior to our club meetings, the garden was mostly locked with a "no trespassing" sign, which was not welcoming to students and gave the impression that the space was off limits. We dream of a garden where students are invited to come in, and relax in nature. Teachers could use the garden as an outdoor classroom, as a way to invigorate classroom learning. 

Above: Students test out one of the currently-collapsing benches in the garden! Below: a draft of garden-dreams using a Google satellite image of the garden. 

Seeds - Our next task was to figure out what seeds to plant. Students in Garden Club consulted seed catalogues and made lists of fruit, vegetables, and herbs they wanted to eat, while students in Ms. Marron's junior Culinary class did research into nutrient-rich food and plants that mitigate metal contamination, as North-Grand High School sits on the former Schwinn Bicycle Factory, and next to several currently-operating metal fabricators. Big on our minds were health (medicinal plants), joy (foods that bring us comfort) and curiosity (foods we've never heard of!)

Seeds grow alongside the people who grow them, changing and adapting with each generation. We wanted to be able to collect seeds from the plants we grow to use for future years. This meant we had to look for seeds that are open-pollinated. Many seeds sold at big box stores (Home Depot, Amazon) are hybrid seeds made through cloning, which means that the seeds saved from the fruit will not produce similarly. Hybrid seeds are made to benefit industrial-scale farming, and with the intent that farmers must always re-buy their seeds for the following year as opposed to saving their own. In pursuit of a large, quirky family of open-pollinated seeds, we got seeds from students' parents, friends' grandmothers, community organizations like Rogers Park Seed Library, and small, often family-run seed companies like True Love Seeds, Bakers Creek Seeds, Fedco Seeds, Kitazawa Seed Co, Adaptive Seeds, Experimental Farm Network, Prairie Moon, and Sandhill Preservation Center. Jimena Cuautle remarked that by buying seeds from small companies, we're helping others as well as ourselves! 

Above: Seeds saved by Josué Cervantes's mother.                         Below: Seeds saved by Kayla's friend's Nonna Anna. 

Below is a list of all the seeds we planted - we had to try to keep track of them all! The junior Culinary class has been hard at work researching these plant varieties and coming up with new dishes that utilize them. We can't wait to see what they whip up!

Plants have fascinating histories and uses across cultures and regions of the world - for example, Bitter Melon originated in Africa, where it is staple of the ǃKung people in the Kalahari desert, Namibia, Angola, and Botswana. It is currently used widely across Asia, Africa, South and Central America, and the Caribbean. In Mexico, the fruit is used to treat diabetes and dysentery. In Peru, its leaves are used to cure malaria and treat inflammation. In Nicaragua, bitter melon is used to treat stomach pains, coughs, headaches, hypertension, and help with the childbirth process. It's an important culinary ingredient in China, India, Japan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, The Philippines, and Trinidad and Tobago! Our Bitter Melon seeds come from the island of Okinawa, where it is renowned for promoting health and longevity. 

Food is Medicine! - Many culinary herbs have medicinal uses in addition to lending flavor to our food. For example, Epazote is used to prevent gas, as an expectorant, and to treat asthma. Papalo reduces swelling, lowers blood pressure, and helps with stomach disorders. Culantro is used to treat fevers and chills, vomiting, diarrhea, and colds.  

Sowing - To work with the short growing season, we planted many of our seeds throughout February, March, and April while the ground was still frozen. We used a combination of winter sowing and starting plants indoors under grow lights. 

Winter Sowing - Winter sowing means planting cold-hardy seeds outside in little greenhouses. For this, we used bottles and milk jugs collected from people's recycling containers in the neighborhood. We cleaned and cut holes in the bottom, and made openings along the sides so that our plants could get proper drainage, but stay insulated from the cold. We planted seeds, labeled our containers, and then set them outside to wait for the magic to happen!

Left to right: containers collected from recycling bins for winter sowing; Ivan teaches Elizabeth, Yaretzy, and Jazmin how to plant seeds for winter sowing; our containers weathering the elements in one of the garden beds.

Indoor Stars - Many of the foods we love come from heat-loving plants, like peppers, tomatillos, squash, and melons. Thanks to Ms. DeVaughn, we got a grow-light setup for our classroom and planted sooooooo many plants. For containers we used seed-starting trays, as well as DIY containers like plastic cups with holes cut in them. With so many people planting seeds at once, we quickly learned that we needed a "Label Lord" to keep us organized, and Andrea Suzao stepped up to make sure we kept track of what we had planted in each container. 

In Ms. Marron's Culinary Class, students raised their own seedlings to join ours in the garden in Spring!

Above, left to right: Our grow-light setup; Kimberly, Citlalli, Andrea, Ivan, Elizabeth, and Jazmin planting seeds in seedling trays; broccoli sprouting! Below: Cucumbers sprouting!

As the plants grew bigger, we repotted them so that they could grow more roots. Especially tomatoes and tomatillos benefit from being repotted because they grow roots along their stems!

Flower Feast - Some of our plants, especially our cucumbers and squash, were excited to get in the ground and started flowering. In order to encourage them to put on leaf and root growth first, we kept them in check by eating their flowers. Surprise! Cucumber flowers taste like...cucumber!

Below: Juan, Andrea, Citlalli, and Jojo snack on fresh cucumber flowers as a way of keeping our cucumbers in check. 

This squash flower bloomed just in time for the exhibition!

Fruit Party - We had a lot of tropical fruit on our initial seed list, so we experimented with having a fruit party, eating fruit from the grocery store, and then collecting and planting the seeds. We ate/planted pineapple, avocado, tamarind, papaya, mango, and pomegranate. Our mangos molded (whoops!). Fresh tamarind became one of our favorite snacks!

Below: the fruit we started with; tamarind and papaya seeds; pineapple tops and avocado seeds growing roots in water.

Trash! (Hello Papacito) - One challenge our students presented from the beginning: how to keep the garden free of trash? Currently there is only one trash can in front of the school, and while people don't intentionally throw trash in the garden, it blows in from the front of the school, as well as from the public sidewalks. So one day our students volunteered to do a HUGE trash cleanup. There was so much trash, they each collected an entire bag full. While collecting trash, we found a small dead garden snake. We decided to make him our mascot and took him inside. We named him Papacito, and will burry him in the garden in the summer. 

Below: Melissa, Elizabeth, Ethan, Andrea, Citlalli, Ivan, Maria, and Yaretzy collect trash in the garden; Voting on the name for our (dead) snake.

In the Weeds - Once Spring came, the North-Grand garden space was full of weeds! Like lemonade from lemons, we made Dandelion syrup from Dandelions, and flower-crowns from Purple Deadnettle. 

While some plants deemed "weeds" are actually native to Illinois, like Large Yellow Wood Sorrel, many common weeds we encounter in the Garden are settler weeds - plants that were brought to the continent by European colonizers in the mid-1600s. For instance, Dandelion, Purple Deadnettle, and Wild Carrot were all brought over by European settlers for their medicinal purposes. It is said that Dandelion spread so quickly that it reached the East Coast before the settlers themselves did, and served as a warning sign for the Ojibwe that new people had arrived. By the time that European colonizers arrived on their lands, the Ojibwe had already incorporated the Dandelion into their culinary and medicinal practices and folklore. 

On the subject of weeds, Zapotec and Maya Ch'orti' Environmentalist Dr. Jessica Hernandez writes: 

"When healing landscapes, the word that is used to do this is coined as restoration. Restoration teaches us that in order to heal a landscape, we must get rid of all the invasive species that are known as weeds. However, this fails to truly heal the entire landscape as it only focuses on one component, invasive species, and not on other factors that might be impacting the entire ecosystem or landscape. I have sat in many presentations about invasive species where they have been called the devil, evil, or nightmares. However, the irony that lies within these descriptors is that for many who practice restoration or are in the environmental sciences, most of these invasive species are their plant relatives, as these were introduced during colonial times by settlers and colonizers. What this means is that many white people have lost their ancestral roots due to the assimilation the Americas have undergone and, as a result, they have lost their relationships with the same plants they now deem as terrible beings. Yes, invasive species harm an entire ecosystem, sometimes outcompeting all native plants in this same landscape; however, we are taught as Indigenous peoples that regardless of whether this plant belongs there or not, we must ask its spirit for permission. We acknowledge them as displaced relatives rather than invasive species, since at the end of the day, they are also someone’s plant relatives. What Western conservation, environmental sciences, and restoration continue to teach us is that anything that is not native is not welcomed to the flora or fauna landscapes. However, this rhetoric is never applied to humans as we seem to be the exception for our own laws, rules, and regulations that we only apply to our environments."

- Dr. Jessica Hernandez

Above: Gabby makes a flower crown out of dandelions and purple dead-nettle. Below: Dandelion syrup made from dandelion flowers collected by Kimberly, Ethan, and Melissa in the North-Grand garden. We ate the first round ourselves and shared a second round with other students at the CAPE End of the year exhibition. Sometimes student say it's actually not that bad, and sometimes that it's better than honey!

Putting in the Labor - Once Ms. DeVaughn's Environmental Geology class testing the soil, they were able to give us the go-ahead that there was no metal contamination in the raised beds. However, because the weeds had been left to grow for so long, we needed to remove at least 8 inches of soil from the beds and replace it with compost if we wanted our plants to be able to compete with the weeds. 

When we started our project, many people told us that it was just too much work to expect from students -- but when the hard labor needed to be done, our students showed up in a big way, pulling weeds, and tilling and shoveling soil to make garden-able space! 

We had originally been relying on an external contractor to repair the garden beds, replace the soil, and clear the weeds before planting. However, when we found out they couldn't come until mid-June (after much of planting season) we got to work weeding and replacing the top level of soil in any beds that were still (mostly) standing. We didn't want all the hard work that our students did planting and raising seedlings to be dashed! So we pulled out the big tools...including machetes, shovels, rakes, and an electric tiller!

Below: Students get to work on the garden beds. Jazmin, Kimberly, Andrea, Adriana, Melissa, Ethan, Juan, Jojo, Citlalli, team up for a Garden Club busy bee.

Pulling up the weeds brought up so many mysteries: What kind of creature dug this mysterious hole in one of the raised beds? How did this morel mushroom get here! Worms are great garden helpers because their tunnels aerate the soil and their poo adds nutrients. Anytime we found a worm - and we found many! We moved them to a safe location to reincorporate into the new soil. 

Planting Trees - The saying goes: the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago, or today! One of our early Garden Club dreams was to have several fruit trees in the garden. Thankfully we received 8 free native fruit trees from a give-away hosted by the Chicago Neighborhood Planting Project and Recalcitrant Seeds at the People Over Profit Free Store (2712 W Division St). We planted Pawpaw, American Persimmon, American Plum, and Chokecherry, all native to Chicago. These trees will take some years to grow and bare fruit, so students picked out places in the garden where they imagine future North-Grand students will sit and enjoy the shade (and a fresh snack). Planting trees is a practice of imagining the future and giving forward to future generations of North-Grand students - though you know we'll be coming back to taste the (non-metaphorical) fruits of our labor!

Above: Juan, Citlalli, David, and Jojo water a tree they've just planted. Below: While digging a hole for this Pawpaw tree, we found the biggest worm any of us have ever seen! It rivals some of the garden snakes we've spotted. 

Sharing our Growth - Even though our output is a little different from most CAPE clubs, we enjoyed sharing our progress at the annual CAPE exhibition at Hairpin Arts Center. We showed planting instructions and planning documents alongside a few of our prize seedlings, and offered up some snacks: tamarind pods and dandelion syrup!

Above: Citlalli, Adriana, Juan, Jojo, Gabby, Ms. Welsh, Josue, Kimberly, Othello, Kayla, Yaretzy, Maria, and Ms. Hetzel pose with their display at the CAPE exhibition. Everyone holds a plant. Below: Close-up of the display wall. 

At Last! Transplanting Outside - Starting small is starting somewhere (if you can call anything Garden Club did this quarter small). We were able to make 6 out of 16 beds useable, and made 4 mounds for corn, beans, and squash. Josué Cervantes told us about his mother's and grandmother's Three Sisters planting system, and we read about the Iroquois Three Sisters Mound design. 

Above: Citlalli plants a long row of tomatoes while Juan plants a long row of peppers. In between them, Ethan and Elisabeth have planted short rows of carrots. The three plants will grow alongside each other as companions. Below: Raised bed planning sheet.

We researched and designed the layout of our garden beds based on companion planting, when two or more different plants are grown next to each other in order to benefit each other. Companion plants work together to create a healthier garden. Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) is one familiar companion planting tradition. 

Below: Corn seeds laid out on a mound where we plan to plant them, alongside transplanted squash. Once the corn is a few inches high, we will plant pole beans to climb up them.

Above: Corn sprouting! Below: Winter-sown cauliflower, kale, lettuce, and beets transplanted into raised beds. 

Above: Tomatos, peppers, and eggplants transplanted from our indoor starts. Below: Milkweed planted by the gate, and carrots sprouting. 

We're seeing growth already! These two photos are taken of the same plants, two weeks apart. 

Summer Dreams and Beyond - Summer is going to be an expansive time in the garden - and a time for us to enjoy the fruits of our Winter and Spring labor! Once the garden is repaired mid-June, we'll be planting native flowers and pollinator plants throughout the garden, filling the remaining beds with fall crops, harvesting food for the campus Love Fridge, and working towards projects that will make the garden a relaxing place for students to be: seating, meditation spaces, and garden art. We'll be welcoming new Freshman to the Garden, and hope to open the Fall with a back-to-school Harvest Festival.

See a report on our Summer 2022 activities here!

Resources - Below are some resources that helped us along. 

Organizations (ones with *** have paid internship programs for Chicago youth!)

Curriculum

Podcasts

Movies and Videos

Readings

Planting Guides 

Gardens & Urban Agriculture Projects in Chicago

Seeds & Seedlings (Local - Free Seed Libraries / Banks)

Seeds & Seedlings (Companies)


Much love from Garden Club as we continue to grow alongside our plants!