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Flowers and plants bloom at Banting Memorial High School during annual plant sale

May 7, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

The Green Industries Program at Banting Memorial High School held its annual plant sale on Saturday, May 2, and saw many visitors arrive at the greenhouse to buy flowers and plant seedlings.

There was also an opportunity to meet some of the animals that students care for at the school.

The Green Industries program at Banting provides hands-on learning for students in horticulture, landscaping, and animal studies. The program is very popular and offers students a chance to learn more about environmental studies.

For kids who live in an urban setting, the program offers a chance to learn new things. For kids who live on a farm in the area, it is an opportunity to expand their knowledge of things they are probably already aware of.

“The Green Industries program is gardening, horticulture, agriculture, floristy, forestry, landscaping, as well as animal studies,” explained Nikki Pineau, the Banting faculty member who runs the program. “We have a student going to provincials this week for floristry, and there is a team of two students that are doing a landscaping competition at the provincials at the Toronto Congress Centre.”

Floristry is the cultivation of flowers as well as their arrangement. The Green Industries program is a standard credit program.

“Some of the courses are agriculture, some are just called Green Industries,” Pineau explained. “And there are animals. Some of the plants come here as little tiny plants already from Bradford Greenhouses, and we take care of them and grow them. Some are grown from seed. We had 1,000 tomato plants sold today that were all grown from seed. We teach things from basic plant skills and knowledge from basic photosynthesis and more. There’s a lot of work in agriculture. This is historically a farming area, but it is also changing. We have lots of kids here who don’t know anything about farming.”

The program at the school dates back to the 1950s.

The students also raise and care for small animals, such as chickens and rabbits.

Students and staff greeted visitors at the school, and local residents were eager to buy plants to get ready for spring planting in the garden.  

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