By Margaret Houben
UPDATED:
Susan Bondar, recently organized an afternoon of planting trees with Ms Janet McCloy’s grade 4/5 class on Wednesday, May 30, which saw approximately 28 students plant approximately 100 Ponderosa pine seedlings in behind the Barriere Elementary School.
Bondar noted the seedlings were donated thanks to the generosity of Rotary Clubs in Kamloops, Preserve Planet Earth committee.
Once the students had made the short trek from the school to the field behind the school property they were all assembled and Bondar introduced her two helpers, Ira Hudgin and Breagh Kobayashi, both students from the University of British Columbia (UBC) who are doing a four month internship for the Lower North Thompson Community Forest Society.
The elementary school students were then divided into four groups, then shown how to measure how many steps each child had to take that would measure out three meters for placing of the young trees, then they started planting.
The youngsters learned how to use narrow shovels to open a hole in the ground, put the seedling into the hole, and then pat down the earth around it. They then dug another hole a few inches away from the seedling for a tea-bag full of fertilizer. It was explained that the tea-bag absorbs water and holds it for the plant, and the fertilizer is released slowly.
Although their were 100 young trees to plant, it only took the class about an hour to plant all of them.
Now all they have to do is watch them grow.