A little bit of history

by Illène Pevec

As a child, I loved playing outdoors, climbing trees, camping, and catching tadpoles to watch them transform into frogs in a basin of water. I assumed in adulthood that other children also might thrive given the chance to explore nature. Fresh out of college, I started an outdoor preschool on 40 acres of land along a Colorado mountain river. Years later, in my work with Arts Umbrella, I visited a Vancouver, BC inner-city elementary school where the lack of school resources shocked me. I felt deep inside myself that I had to address these shortcomings somehow. I met a university vice-president at a conference dedicated to ethics and social responsibility in higher education and learned about the program she ran for inner-city children, Farm in the City, that brought youth to a large garden with art and environmental activities staffed by Master Gardeners and artists. I knew immediately that I needed to create this at Grandview Elementary School. The school had a large grassy area, perhaps half an acre, that was mostly muddy due to rain. It could be transformed if enough partners worked together. I found an architecture student to partner with me. We could both write our theses —my MA in Education, hers in Landscape Architecture.

Together we did participatory planning with every child, teacher, administrator and nearby school neighbors to see what they wanted on that space. Based on that process Tracy Penner made a fabulous plan that included a school garden for food, a hummingbird and butterfly garden, an ethnobotanic garden, a community garden, a wild bird garden on the school”s perimeter and a longhouse as an outdoor classroom that would reflect the First Nation’s community the school served. I began raising money. An architect donated the Longhouse design and we got a public arts grant for the school’s First Nations elder to carve two totem poles on site. We partnered with everyone who had an interest in helping: Britannia Commmunity Center, the Mennonite Central Committee of Canada Green Team, the Vancouver Youth Alliance, and Evergreen.

The children, the community and school grounds crew planted and the result has fed and nurtured the community now for twenty-seven years. The children named the garden “The Spirit of Nature”. Mosaics, a mural, totem poles and carved First Nations art honor the local culture and people’s participation in art. We won awards on a local, provincial and national level. People from all over the world have visited. Children can play and learn in beauty. Because of that garden’s success and all I learned with that community I won a grant from the Canadian International Development Agency in 2001 to go to Brazil, where I was born, to work in an economically challenged community to work with schools and a community center. Thus began A Child’s Garden of Peace.

Below are photos of The Spirit of Nature and the projects in Brazil, Colorado, Mexico, Peru and Colombia that I have been fortunate to do in collaboration with others. My gratitude to all partners and to the Great Spirit that creates and guides us all has no end.