Neighborhood Sites
- Sunnyside Piazza
- Awakening
- Buckman Neighborhood Compost Project
- MACE Center - Village Green Gardens
- Mt. Scott High School
- Creative Science School
- Food Front Cooperative Grocery
- Freda's Tree
- Madison High School
- PSU: Look Up and See Garden
- Rigler School
- Central Street Community Project
- Share It Square
- Beyond Portland
Madison High School
Location 2735 NE 82nd Avenue
Contact Anna Gordon, annagord@gmail.com
Schedule
Friday June 5th 3:15pm- 6pm VBC Kick-off event! Bring food for a potluck, eat ice cream, enjoy live music and start mixing!
Saturday June 6th Volunteer schedule: 10am-5pm Cob mixing, Foundation building, Lunch provided
Workshop: Food Forest with Marisha Auerbach
Sunday June 7th Volunteer Schedule: 10am- 2pm Cob mixing and building, Bottle walls, sculpture, Snacks provided
Workshop:10am-12pm Permaculture in an educational setting and Madison garden tour
Wednesday June 10th Volunteer Schedule: 12 pm-5pm Cob building, Snacks provided. T-Horse will be at Madison! Madison student’s last day of school!
Thursday June 11th Volunteer Schedule: 10am-2pm Cob building and sculpture, Snacks provided
Friday June 12th Volunteer Schedule 10 am-2pm Cob building and sculpture, Snacks provided
Saturday June 13th Volunteer schedule: 10 am -5 pm Cob building Lunch provided Workshop: 10am-12 pm – From Eco-roof to Rain Garden
Sunday June 14th Volunteer schedule: 10 am-5pm Cob building and finishing Lunch Provided
Description: Madison High School is located in outer NE Portland on 82nd Ave. and Siskiyou. The Madison campus has been a hub for several different campus greening projects, including a nature-scape, a bio-swale and a forest restoration project on the adjacent golf course. More recently the focus has turned to greening with edibles!
Each year the biology classes transition their studies from food to plants with an activity that requires them to guess which part of a plant various vegetables belong to. Many of our students struggle to even name the vegetable they are looking at. Red leaf lettuce looks nothing like the iceberg lettuce hiding in a Big Mac! Confusion reigns: “Wait! If carrots are roots, then how do they reproduce? What, they have flowers? No way.” Most students have only been exposed to food as a plastic-wrapped commercial product tucked neatly on a shelf in a grocery store. We end this activity each year with a mental note to start a school garden…
In 2008 staff, students and community volunteers broke ground on an edible permaculture garden project on the south facing lawn behind the main offices. Last spring students, staff and community volunteers, sheet mulched a large area of the lawn, and built the beginnings of an herb spiral garden. When students arrived back in the fall, the garden was in full bloom with sunflowers, and the herb spiral was buzzing with pollinators! This year the garden has expanded, and through a partnership with Portland Community Gardens, will include plots for community members. A few of the projects in the garden this year have included: engaging the sophomore biology classes in the planning and planting of a perennial food forest, working with the AP Environmental science class to test the effects of endo-myccorhizal fungi on spinach, peas and lettuce and hosting Saturday volunteer work days in the garden to increase community involvement. One of the goals of the garden is to supply fresh, local food to the Madison cafeteria salad bar, and to compost food scraps from the cafeteria. To achieve this goal, a group of 12 students meet weekly as part of a “compost crew”, working to close the loop between garden and cafeteria—they are currently working on designing worm compost bins that will compost cafeteria scraps and also act as garden benches!
This is the first year of VBC for Madison and excitement is high! During the VBC we will be working on an outdoor classroom structure on the site that will be built with wood and cob and include an eco-roof, rainwater catchment and a rain garden. This structure will provide year round outdoor learning opportunities for students and a shelter for community gardeners.
Come check out the site and help us build this student inspired structure! Our goal is to have every student get their hands dirty during the week of VBC!
Community volunteers will be provided with snacks and lunch. Even though this site is a little bit further out, it is worth making the trek! Madison is easily accessible by the 72 bus and only a 20 minute bike ride from inner NE Portland. Workshops will include—cob building and plastering, Designing an eco-roof, permaculture gardening in an educational setting (food forest, herb spiral gardening) and rainwater harvesting. See you there!
.
.
Outdoor classroom designed by Sebastian Collet
