Four schools across Canada show what happens when students are given the tools and trust to build a greenhouse.
If you didn’t know it already, students are extremely capable humans, able to tackle projects with a sense of audacity and creativity that (maybe) goes untapped in some older folks. So, when you give them the challenge of growing their own food, they commit, rather wholeheartedly, we should add. It starts as a project, like a club idea, a class assignment, or a response to a funding opportunity, and it becomes something a bit harder to name. A sense of ownership. A connection to where food actually comes from. A reason to show up after school and get dirt under their fingernails. Across four very different Canadian communities, that shift is happening in greenhouses and vertical farms that students built, maintain, and call their own.
The Earthlings Climate Club at Sussex Middle School didn’t start big. Five students shared a frustration: nobody at their school was really talking about climate change, so they came up with the idea of building a greenhouse for their breakfast club. The club grew as more students joined, not always because of climate passion, but because their friends were there and it was fun. Those students became advocates too. That’s the lesson the Earthlings want other schools to know: not everyone arrives through the front door of environmental concern, and that’s fine.
While waiting for greenhouse materials to arrive (a familiar patience test for rural schools), the students launched a composting program to keep momentum going, earning them a feature in the Telegraph Journal. The greenhouse eventually came together, growing produce for a breakfast club that many students depend on, with ambitions to expand into the cafeteria and local food banks.
“Physical hands-on is definitely what I learn through mostly,” said student lead Lyla, “and I feel like we should do more hands-on because it’s way easier to learn.”
This next project was never just about the vegetables. For the Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, the greenhouse is one piece of a longer project to rebuild food sovereignty—a way of life that sustained communities for generations before it was systematically disrupted. Youth project lead Jana Sasakamoose framed it quite bluntly: “Many members only get $300 a month to survive off of… It’s hard to meet those needs, let alone basic needs such as food.”
Alert Bay students at work building their outdoor greenhouse with the help of First Nations community partners. Photo courtesy of N:OW for Net-Zero.
The response was a greenhouse dome chosen for its ability to maximize natural light and air circulation, selected after community consultations on preferred features and plant varieties. Over 250 community members were engaged through canning workshops, gardening sessions, and planning conversations. This is a multi-phase project, with solar panels, underground food storage, and ongoing education all in the pipeline.
Alert Bay sits on a small island off the coast of British Columbia, accessible only by ferry. Everything comes by boat, including all the school’s food. With 34 students, 98% of whom are First Nations, and relentlessly windy, rainy weather, a conventional outdoor garden was never going to work.
What the school had, though, was community knowledge. Indigenous nations on the island, including the Kwakwaka’wakw, ‘Namgis, and Nawalakw, had already been greenhouse farming, and students came to school with that experience from home. Rather than starting from scratch, Alert Bay Elementary asked its First Nations partners for guidance on suppliers, building techniques, and growing approaches suited to the island’s conditions. The result is a student-maintained greenhouse feeding the school’s hot lunch program, built on the principle of learning from what’s already working.
“If we start now,” said student lead Evan, “we can make a difference in the way our school and community think about food and waste.”
Oilfields High School in Diamond Valley, Alberta, has been running a vertical farm out of a modified shipping container for years, growing microgreens, lettuce, and herbs that students sell to local grocers, restaurants, and their own school concession. The problem was pests. Before the N:OW for Net-Zero funded biosecurity headerhouse was built, the farm lost 30% of its crops to contamination. Since construction (done by hand with shop students and retired local tradespeople), that loss rate has hit zero.
Students at Oilfields High School surround the adult lead, Cindy Watts, as they prep to sell their school-grown microgreens to their student body at lunch. Photo courtesy of N:OW for Net-Zero.
CTV News Calgary and CBC have covered the farm, and in April 2026, their Member of Parliament, John Barlow, visited to recognize the students’ work firsthand. This year, the farm launched microgreen smoothies at the school concession twice a week, earned a local grocer’s support for purchasing the school’s greens, and is now actively recruiting youth volunteers and exploring university and company sponsorships to support students as they transition out of high school.
A greenhouse, a dome, a modified shipping container, and a grow light in a boot room. The form changes, but the impulse is the same: students decide that food sovereignty isn’t someone else’s problem to solve, and they get to work.
