Tuesday, December 8th, 2015.
Planting oak seeds in Oakville
Story and photography by Greg Lowenthal
-OAKVILLE
A few little pots sitting on the side of a ledge would look unassuming to most people, but those pots have seeds in them. Oak tree seeds, planted by volunteers and members of the Sheridan Earth Club.
The initiative, called Adopt a pot, which was developed in cooperation with Oakville Green, a non-profit environmental group, is aimed at planting new trees in forests around the Oakville area. With a current total of 15 pots around the campus, the aim is to get people to adopt a plant and have them planted in the spring. The club also has another project on the way, which is an herb garden that will be planted on campus next semester, said club president Yi Xiang.
“We connected with a group in Oakville called Oakville Green, they’re another environmental organization and one member met with us one day and gave us a bag of oak seeds, which are acorns and then she showed us how to plant them in pots, how to water them and eventually they’ll grow into little sprouts and eventually we’ll be able to plant them next spring. If all goes well they’ll turn into oak seeds.” Said Nick Crawford a member of the club.
Crawford is an active volunteer in the group. He says his favourite part of being in the Earth Club is “Weirdly enough, I like doing the promotions for events. I like to stand out in the hall and bother people, hand out flyers, hand out candies and just tell about the events we’re having.” Said Crawford.
He added “It’s a cool way to meet interesting people and try to get them interested in our club, get the word out and make changes. In addition our events are also fun.”
The club has 15 members in it currently, but usually has between 5 and 7 active members. The club meets every 4 weeks and is always looking for new members.
While the club has had some success with their events, they’ve also run into a few obstacles in terms of getting volunteers and new people to join their group, Xiang said.
“We do run into a lot of obstacles. For example, we’re trying to focus on connecting with other departments and also other people. For the start of the term, we don’t really focus on advertising, we just focus on doing events.” Xiang said.
Nick added “But we’ve started up a Facebook group and that seems to be a really good way to get people to know about our group. All sorts of people will end up liking the page because one guy in Game Design will share the page and then his friend in Illustration will share it. So Facebook is one of the best ways we’ve found to advertise.”
