Pedagogic vegetable garden and garden in the Angra do Heroísmo Museum

The pedagogic vegetable garden and gardens that the Angra do Heroísmo Museum (MAH) has since October already received nearly a hundred children in pre-school age.

The green zone that goes round the educative service of this institution is located in the former building of the Âncora Tobacco Factory, in the rears of the Museum.

As the MAH anticipated, the boys who visit the new service “weed herbs; gather stones; plant flowers and horticultural products. And between pruning, digging, planting and the irrigation, there is time for telling histories, to be knowing the difference between seeds and bulbs, appreciating the smell of the aromatic herbs, knowing the usefulness of several tools and, especially, recognizing that it is necessary to give time for the offspring to be strong, the bulbs to emerge and the flowers, finally, to appear”.

To do so that the youngest populations maintain the contact with the horticultural and flowers’ productions, through the direct participation in their process, constitutes the main goal of the initiative.

“After one morning around the land, handling buckets, small hoes, rakes and watering cans, when the hunger comes and one is tired, one also learns that to do so that of the ground the lettuces of the salad, the carrots of the soup and the wheat of the bread appear demands work, effort and wisdom”, refer the people responsible for the project.

The project, which reckons with the support of the Service of Agrarian Development and of the Municipal Garden of Angra do Heroísmo, supplying technical directions and allowing planting and seeds, is going to be maintained along the whole year, being foreseen weekly visits of four groups of children, who so will be going to accompany the development of the plants and to look after their growth.

In the website of the MAH, the entry “O Museu Verde” was created, inside the “Museu Educativo”, a space in which the virtual visitor will be able to accompany the progresses of the vegetable garden and accompany the determination and commitment of the small gardeners.