The Intergenerational Garden got a makeover of sorts on the weekend, with volunteers building new garden beds, just before winter closure.
Volunteers from the Rotary Club of Haney and Alouette Men’s Shed – a national group that only started earlier this year in Maple Ridge – were out in droves Saturday, Oct. 22, hammering the planks together, and filling each bed with fresh soil.
Heather Treleaven, executive director of the Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows Katzie Seniors Network – the group that oversees the garden – sang the praises of all the volunteers, giving a special shout out to Bob Nicholson with Alouette Men’s Shed, whom she said, was instrumental in all of the measuring, ordering, and cutting, of all the wood, in addition to coordinating the entire crew.
Recently re-elected school trustees Mike Murray and Elaine Yamamoto also lent a hand.
“Seeing students and seniors in the garden together makes it all worthwhile,” Murray said about the project.
Yamamoto admired how an overgrown, empty lot was “made into a magical place for seniors and children to grow together.”
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The Rotary Club of Haney made a cash donation of $350 to the garden. That money is in addition to funding support from the Kiwanis Club of Golden Ears and the Maple Ridge Community Foundation.
Haney Builders Supplies donated all the hardware for the beds.
“So nice to see that the beds are being replaced and repaired,” said Heather Jonatschick, former garden coordinator.
“Continuing to make their footprint smaller and broken up for better access will be such an advantage. Congrats on your successful community event days to accomplish all the hard work that needed done,” she said.
The garden, at the corner of Edge Street and 121st Avenue, was constructed in 2012 by the seniors network, after receiving a $24,750 grant from New Horizons for Seniors, and with cooperation from the school district and the City of Maple Ridge.
It is a teaching garden, that allows older volunteers the opportunity to be outside, healthy, and active, to teach the young – often students from nearby Eric Langton Elementary and St. Patrick’s School – providing them with an outdoor classroom.
About 400 elementary school students take part in the outdoor garden programs each year.
Around 30 senior volunteers take care of the garden, which is now closed for the winter and will re-open next spring.
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