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The new year brought a new director to the Lalla Aouda Saadia high school. He is now settling into his post, and has met twice with Mohamed El Haouzi, GDF’s Director of Projects in Marrakech. While they proceed with the consultations necessary to continue with our original garden, Mohamed has been approached by directors and teachers of many other schools – in Marrakech and its environs – who heard about our efforts and wish to rehabilitate their grounds. We are excited by this expanding interest in our ‘edible and ornamental schoolyards’ approach, and have decided to broaden our project to include primary, middle and high schools. Now we have children and young adults from 6 to 18 years old involved in our project.

In this and future reports, we will tell you about some of these new projects, while keeping you posted on developments at the Lalla Aouda Saadia high school. One school we are eager to assist is the Ecole Abou Firass primary school in the Marrakech medina. As you can see in the picture, the school staff has already prepared the garden for planting. Now that spring is arriving in Marrakech, GDF is ready to buy plants so the school director and teachers can roll up their sleeves and start planting.

We have dug into the past to reflect on the original aspirations of the high school girls from Aouda Saadia. When the rehabilitation project first started two years ago, the girls were tasked with putting into pictures their impressions of an ideal school. We posed them with the question "Out of all the areas in your school, which area do you enjoy being in the most?”

The thirty girls were united in their answers, drawing pictures of clean and scenic gardens, reflecting their need to have a serene spot to relax and gain the strength needed for their studies. This need was particularly obvious amongst those who were residents of the school.

Historically, Marrakech was an oasis dotted with traditional caravanserais that served as a resting place and shelter for merchants from southern Morocco travelling to the north (and vice versa). This oasis motivated a lot of people to come from afar in search of its tranquil grounds. The images of peaceful gardens drawn by the girls reveal a connection anchored in Moroccan culture that the people of Morocco still have with their natural surroundings.

The drawing exercise was initiated by Charles Hamilton, a Masters student in Landscape Architecture at the State University of New York, as part of his university research project. He surmised that rehabilitating the school garden would greatly enhance the learning experience of the girls at Aouda Saadia.