To wrap up the semester, two MPS students in Cornell’s Public Garden Leadership Program led virtual educational programs engaging local audiences.
Kim Ellis led a workshop on Growing Winter Vegetables with your Classes for teachers from the Ithaca City School District and BOCES. She shared lessons she learned testing a variety of cold frames and row covers to protect 12 different cold-tolerant crops over winter in the Pounder Vegetable Garden at Cornell Botanic Gardens.
True to its name, ‘Dwarf Blue Siberian’ kale was the best performer, Ellis found. “But the big surprise was the delicious ‘Joan’ rutabaga greens, and the fact that a double fabric row cover was ample protection for these hardy vegetables,” she notes. “A cold frame is still better, because the fabric row cover freezes to the ground and you have to wait for a thaw to harvest.”
Ellis talked about performance of the other greens and vegetables she grew and discussed how to build a cold frame. In breakout sessions, teachers discussed how they might use winter vegetables in their school gardens. “Our goal was to provide an opportunity for kids to get outside in the winter and for teachers to better align vegetable production with the school year,” says Ellis. “I also developed classroom curricular activities to coincide with winter growing, such as how to determine soil texture and how to take crop, soil, and weather measurements for kids to graph.”
In partnership with the Botanic Gardens’ Student & Public Engagement Coordinator Kevin Moss, Trey Ramsey offered a Virtual Tour of Cornell Botanic Gardens for members of the Cornell LGBTQ+ community. “Originally we were planning to work with several partnering units, including the Cornell University LGBT Resource Center, to hold an in-person tour and reception in April,” says Ramsey. “But the COVID-19 pandemic changed all that. We recognized that there was still a need both for community and access to nature, so we decided to shorten the tour and move it online.”
This was the first of what will be many more collaborations between the LGBTQ+ community and the Botanic Gardens, adds Ramsey. “I planned the event because it is important to represent and reach all forms of diversity within our work in public gardens, and I wanted to bridge my work between the LGBTQ+ community and the public gardens field.”
Moss led the tour, a slideshow depicting information about the Botanic Gardens and some information specific to the LGBTQ+ community. He discussed Iris, the goddess of rainbows, and shared the story of Sir Cedric Morris, an artist and iris breeder who fell in love with Arthur Lett-Haines. “At the end, we had about 15 minutes for people to chat,” says Ramsey. “The discussion centered around peoples’ experience during quarantine and their interactions with the Botanic Gardens.
“I will use lessons from planning this event, including pre- and post- quarantine, in my action project, where I will be creating a toolkit for public gardens to better include LGBTQ+ folks, particulary transgender folks, in their diversity and inclusion initiatives.”