Seed-to-table Children’s Garden to encourage healthy eating

The Hub Child and Family Centre for Prince Edward County officially launched its $100,000 capital campaign for a new seed-to-table Children’s Garden aimed to encourage and inspire life-long skills and habits for healthy eating and environmental sustainability.

“We are excited to begin working with the many stakeholders in the region to create an inspirational landscape for learning, play and growing food,” said Tamara Kleinschmidt, HIB executive director.  “The Children’s Garden project enhances the mission of The HUB to provide opportunities for quality early learning. We are extending that learning outside on our property to show firsthand the process from seed to table in a fun and engaging way.”

Kleinschmidt says the project planning has been a real community effort from day one with staff, parents, children and the wider community in providing ideas and design concepts.
Learning the whole process from Seed to Table is to provide a fun and engaging environment for the children. The various program components of the project will be built to be inclusive as possible with the children, parents and community volunteers.

“We hope the project will be the beginning of creating some tangible solutions to some of our community’s food insecurity challenges,”  says Cynthia Peters, Chair of the Children’s Garden fundraising campaign.”

While all the children and families that utilize The HUB programs will be involved with the project, a special focus will be with families of lower income who struggle on a regular basis with food security.

“Our first founding sponsor is Slow Food The County – a leader in promoting local food education and supporting food security projects in our community,” said Peters. “We hope that many other organizations, residents and companies become involved as well through donations and volunteer support”.

The campaign will build a mutli-faceted food playground for learning and sourcing on the grounds surrounding The Hub building. The official ground breaking ceremony took place with the installation of boarder trees along the municipal property located on the south side of the site. The formal build of the gardens, outdoor pavilion and other learning areas will begin in spring 2014. The project is targeted to be completed in 2015.
The HUB Child & Family Centre is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing the families of the County with quality early learning and child care services. It has been in operation since 1989 and is focused on programming for children 0-12 years old.

Community Partners
During the planning stage and on an ongoing basis The HUB will be working closely with community minded individuals and organizations that identify food security and education as a local priority.  To date the project has garnered positive response for the proposed programming from Slow Food The County, Prince Edward Lennox and Addington Social Services, The Children and Youth Services Network.

A dedicated section on The HUB website will be launched at the end of November for on-line donations and project updates. While the estimated total budget for the project is projected at $100,000, gift-in-kind donations  will also be encouraged.