This Spring 2018, students and volunteers used natural building techniques to create a central gathering area on the Hillside Garden and a flat space for our future greenhouse (to be partly funded by the F2S grant). In May and June, class and community work parties were led by Molly Murphy of the BC Mud Girls Collective and Joss Krayenhoff of Sirewall, Inc. to learn about and build retaining walls with rammed-earth and a beautiful benches with cob.

Barefoot students and teachers squished a wet slurry of local clay, sand, and straw between their toes to create the cob mixture that they then used to build the bench. The colourful retaining walls were built by school families using a mixture of local dirt, plus some iron oxide dyes, sand, and a pinch of cement. Just uphill from these new features is where we plan to install the school greenhouse this fall!

And here are some photos of the final products!