Lanark County Community Justice's BE STRONG Program partners with UCDSB's Rural Elementary School's Outdoor Classroom Design process.
- Laurie Clark
- Nov 18, 2019
- 2 min read
Garden Classrooms and Restorative Practices on the Elementary School Playground
“The garden is a master teacher of responsibility and decision-making. In taking responsibility for a living, growing ecosystem that will endure beyond a single class, students begin to co-create their outdoor classroom. In this way, garden-based learning goes beyond general experiential learning as it takes place in a purposeful, ever-changing environment.” - Canadian Organic Growers, Growing Up Organic Toolkit
The restorative partnership between Maple Grove Elementary School, the Upper Canada District School Board (UCDSB), and Lanark County Community Justice (LCCJ) through the BE STRONG program—Building, Encouraging and Supporting Trusting Relationships on Neutral Ground—inspired the creation of a collaborative Restorative Circle Garden.
This initiative brought together teachers, students from Kindergarten to Grade 6, school administrators, and LCCJ Circle Facilitators for a day of shared learning, relationship building, and community engagement. Participants gathered in a Knowledge Sharing Circle, using a talking piece to exchange ideas, explore restorative garden design, and strengthen connections through meaningful dialogue.
The Knowledge Sharing Circle serves as both a restorative practice and a pedagogical approach, creating a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for curriculum discussions, collaborative learning, and conflict resolution. Whether indoors or outdoors, circles encourage emotional awareness, empathy, active listening, and a strong sense of belonging.
A Restorative Circle Garden extends these practices into the natural environment, providing a dedicated outdoor space where teachers and students can gather for restorative conversations, appreciation circles, storytelling, music, art, reflection, and inquiry. Nature offers a calm and welcoming setting where relationships can be strengthened and learning can flourish.
As spring arrives, classrooms come alive with trays of seedlings growing in sunny south-facing windows. Students eagerly prepare for the planting season, nurturing vegetables, flowers, and herbs before transplanting them into their outdoor learning spaces. Like Maple Grove Elementary School, Drummond Central Public School embraced this seasonal rhythm, using the Knowledge Sharing Circle as a foundational practice within its Outdoor Education program beginning in September 2017.
Once seedlings and transplants are ready, both schools implement hands-on, garden-based learning experiences that connect students with food systems, ecology, environmental stewardship, and the natural world. Garden classrooms naturally integrate learning across multiple curriculum areas, including science, mathematics, food literacy, environmental education, physical education, language, social studies, and the arts, while creating authentic opportunities for inquiry and experiential learning outdoors.
LCCJ Circle Facilitators also worked alongside Maple Grove's Earth Stewards, guiding restorative circle discussions that encouraged students to reflect on how their everyday actions can positively influence their school community, local environment, and the wider world.
Garden classrooms remind us that education extends far beyond classroom walls. By weaving together restorative practices, nature connection, and experiential learning, we cultivate communities rooted in compassion, responsibility, and belonging. As students care for gardens, they also learn to care for one another, for their food, for their health, for their communities, and for the living world they will one day inherit.