Plants are the name of the game when it comes to Jen Edwards and her contributions to Erin Public School.
Edwards was one of 10 people to receive an Everyday Hero award from the Upper Grand District School Board at a June 1 ceremony.
“She’s just one of those genuinely amazing parents and role models for every school,” said nominator and Grade 5 Erin Public School teacher Cathy Dykstra.
“She puts in hours every week, totally behind the scenes … she doesn’t expect any kind of thanks or anything, she just does it because it’s the right thing to do.”
Edwards started volunteering at the school about 10 years ago when her oldest child (now in Grade 9) was a student.
“I didn’t start right away because I didn’t know if it was okay,” Edwards said, recalling when she first began tending to the school’s front flower garden, which at the time was full of thistles.
Many of the flowers now planted there to help beautify the school actually came from Edwards’ personal garden.
“Just over the last 10 years she just kind of gets stuff from her garden and puts it in with TLC and takes care of it,” Dykstra said. “Unbelievable.”
Last May, when the school installed vegetable gardens on the school grounds, Edwards contributed a number of plants to get the gardens going.
“And then I came at night and watered them and all summer, made sure they survived until the fall and then the kids harvested them,” Edwards said.
And she didn’t take breaks for holidays.
As the school is not equipped with outdoor irrigation, in the summer Edwards would drive buckets of water over to the gardens in her van to ensure the plants received the proper amount of care.
“My kids had soccer so I had to come after soccer,” she said, adding the maintenance was often performed in the dark.
Dykstra, who called Edwards’ dedication “amazing,” said even during the school year Edwards will “often pop by on the weekends and she’ll take care of the garden.
“She takes care of the compost bins too, because the raccoons get into them and so on, and she’ll come with her family and tidy things up.”
Over the Christmas holidays, Edwards and her family worked the compost the school collects into the vegetable garden beds.
During the school year Edwards said it is the teachers and students who take care of the gardens on an everyday basis.
Several classes grow the plants from seeds and transplant them into the garden when they are sturdy enough.
The school uses a lot of the produce grown in the gardens for a new cooking club.
Even though much of Edwards’ volunteerism surrounds Erin Public School’s gardens, she has also left her mark in other areas over the last 10 years.
On the first and last day of school, she brings in fudge for all the staff members, Dykstra explained, and Edwards never misses a school assembly, she advocated for the Scientists in School program, is supportive of a math contest, pushes for more funding for arts programs and field trips, and is the chair of the parent council committee.
With her youngest daughter only in Grade 1, Edwards has a number of years remaining to continue volunteering at Erin Public School.
“Anything that we need help with she’s there, but she’s like the quiet person behind the scenes of like everything in the school,” Dykstra said.
“That’s why we thought, ‘you know what? This has been going on for ten years, we need to recognize her this year.’”
And Dykstra said the school community is supportive.
“All those extra things… every individual (effort) would be a morale booster in itself,” she said. “Every single day and it’s with everything, we’re extremely lucky to have her. (She has a) huge impact.”
