Students at Mae Richardson are celebrating Valentine’s Day by learning all about companion planting!

Education Updates

Pollinator Project Rogue Valley Partnership

This past autumn, our garden classes in the Phoenix/ Talent School District were visited by the Pollinator Project Rogue Valley! This awesome organization not only brought games, microscopes, and stories about pollinators to our garden classes, but they also provided a variety of native plants to make our school gardens more pollinator-friendly! Our students had a blast learning from the Pollinator Pals and can't wait to continue their work protecting pollinators in our school gardens!

Milpa Mariposa

All of our partner garden classes have the privilege of welcoming Sylvia Poareo of Milpa Mariposa as a guest speaker this winter! Milpa Mariposa is a one-acre farm located in Ashland that uses the traditional Mesoamerican companion planting of milpa- bringing together diverse plant siblings that work symbiotically to provide nourishment for the community. The three sisters, maize, squash and bean are joined by tomatoes, tomatillos, chiles, herbs and more in this traditional practice.

Our students have the opportunity to learn from Sylvia as she shares stories about the origins of maize and its significance to cultures across the world. Students get to practice shelling maize and learn about the different processes of nixtamalization before getting to sip on the tasty beverage of Atole, made by blending nixtamalized maize with hot water, raw cane sugar (piloncillo) and cinnamon. So far our students have loved learning from Sylvia and we’re so grateful to her for sharing this important knowledge with our students!