The Pelion Community Garden at City Honors School - Pelion Garden

The Pelion Community Garden at City Honors School

Garden History:

The Pelion Community Garden was founded in 2011, the effort spearheaded by a
former City Honors parent who had a vision of turning the four blighted city lots
across the street from the school into an environmental learning center and outdoor
classroom serving the students of City Honors and the greater CHS neighborhood.

With start up money provided by a $10,000 grant from Seeds of Change and
funding from National Grid, the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and several
other local organizations, including Grassroots Gardens, we were able to transform
the vacant lots into one of the first, and by far the largest, learning gardens in the
Buffalo Public School system.

From the beginning, our goal has been to connect kids more profoundly to the food
they consume by promoting an understanding of where certain foods come from
and how they are produced. In addition, we wish to demonstrate to kids growing
up in an urban environment the pleasures gained from growing one's own food and
consuming fresh fruits and vegetables. The garden has evolved beyond our
expectations into an active outdoor learning laboratory that serves a multitude of
academic disciplines and needs at City Honors.

In addition, the garden serves the surrounding community, offering dedicated
raised beds for neighbor adoption and a program of workshops and activities for
both children and adults, while providing a respite of green space in a dense urban
area.

Lot Clean Up and Site Preparation, 2011-2012

Planting and Finishing Touches, 2012-2013

The Pelion Garden Now

The Garden and the School:

The Pelion Community Garden at City Honors School was established in 2011 as a
working garden to serve the students of City Honors School and the surrounding
community as an outdoor classroom teaching lessons in organic food production,
sustainable agriculture, and environmental issues. Over the past four years the
garden has developed into a thriving hub of school activity, with programming that
serves over two hundred students a year in a variety of academic and arts
disciplines. The garden touches every fifth and sixth grader through their science
classes, has served as a lab for numerous home and careers classes, has hosted
many art classes and a growing number of other middle school curricula. In
addition the school now boasts a well-attended after school garden club.

Teachers work with the Pelion garden manager to develop curricula-based lessons
that take advantage of the garden’s distinct features: raised planting beds for
growing vegetables and herbs, a native plants perennial garden, a Native American
“three sisters” garden, a graded rain garden, fruit tree groves, and a grassy area for
group activities and gatherings.

The Garden and the Community:

Although our primary mission is to educate students about issues of food
production, healthy eating and environmental stewardship we are also committed
to serving a positive role in the larger community and encourage families and
community members of all ages to participate in our community programming.
The Pelion site features a group of dedicated raised planting beds that can be
adopted each growing season by neighbors who lack the space or the skills to grow
their own vegetables at home (this year, as in past years, all of the community beds
have been adopted). The garden also serves as the site of regular community
outreach activities, such as gardening workshops and regular “Painting in Pelion”
artist gatherings. In addition we host two annual festivals that are open to the
public—the spring Strawberry Social and the fall Sunflower Social. Such
programming has enabled us to touch the lives of hundreds of Buffalo residents of
all ages and has provided a positive impact on the immediate East Side
neighborhood where the school and garden are located.

In recent months the Pelion Garden has been the sight of many activities that reach
beyond the neighborhood to involve an even broader segment of the Buffalo
community, including:
    • On September 17, 2016, for the fourth year in a row, Pelion will be an
       official stop on the Tour de Farms, a bicycle tour of local, urban and rural
       farms, designed to celebrate and highlight sustainable transportation and our
       connection to the local food system.
    • On August 8, 2015, Pelion was part of the National Garden Walk’s East
       Side Momentum Tour, featuring community gardening efforts outside of
       the official Garden Walk Buffalo boundaries.
    • On July 27, 2015, Pelion was the site of the midsummer Buffalo Reading
       Invasion, a grassroots effort to promote Buffalo’s love of reading through
       large public action.
    • In 2015 Pelion took part in the Buffalo Audubon Society’s pollinator study.

Neighbor-Maintained Growing Beds:

Monthly Work Evenings:

Community Workshops:

Community Service Volunteer Groups:

Summer Watering Program:

“Painting in Pelion” and Art-Making Events:

Official Tour de Farms Stop:

Buffalo Reading Invasion Site:

BPS School Garden Fair, June 2016: