The Allion Elementary
Pollinator Garden Project
by Beverly Landry
Before the cold weather sets in and the ground freezes, Allion Elementary students planted 400 tulip and daffodil bulbs near the school’s main entrance in Lasalle, a borough in the Southwest of Montreal.
Allion houses 10,000 bees on its school roof and the students are ensuring a spring smorgasbord of sweet treats from the first spring blooms for their ‘buzzy’ neighbours.
Allion was awarded a grant from LSF (Learning for a Sustainable Future), a Canadian charity that helps schools integrate sustainability and promote biodiversity within their school’s community.
The Elementary School partnered with Urban Seedling, an organization that specializes in creating vegetable and pollinator gardens in urban settings. Eager grade 6 students shoveled and prepared the earth to receive these numerous bulbs. Josie D’Adamo, proud principal of Allion Elementary, wore her rubber boots and gardening gloves and assisted as 400 individual holes were dug to ensure a good result in the Spring.
Each student and staff member placed one bulb each into holes while wishing these future flowers a good winters sleep. Perennial shrubs, that favour pollinating insects, will also be planted in the late fall and early spring.
The Allion family looks forward with eagerness to early spring when these glorious bulbs poke their green shoots through the thawing ground and raise spirits after another long winter. More importantly, this beautiful pollinator garden will also offer nourishment for our friendly neighbourhood bees waking from their slumber.
