Today NB Traveler is featuring the Marigolds and Murals Project – a program that has been going on for over 20 years in Saint John – and I am interviewing Barry Ogden, the man that brought the program into existence. Barry states: “Well, we started out with it was one garden and one school, and we're now up to about 46 schools all over Greater Saint John. And I think we've gone over 5 million marigolds now. And 10 years ago, we set the world record for the most flowers planted at one time.” When asked what the main purpose of the project was, he responded the following: Well, one of course is beautification. But another reason is to empower children - that they have the power to change, make things happen. And another one was to use what we call cross curriculum learning, which was that they started counting the germination rates, learning about photosynthesis. They wrote some music and they did some artwork. They did some poetry and learned more about their community, where the marigolds were. So it's what we call cross curriculum. It's hands on and academic, and it's inclusive. Every child was involved, and of course it develops pride in the child and in the community because people were saying, “My God, who planted those beautiful marigolds?” And of course, it was the children and their teachers. To obtain more information about The Marigold Project, go to their website
Mark J Brewer, Host
[00:00:00] I am Mark the New Brunswick traveler and here we talk about New Brunswick stuff.
[00:00:11] There's so many great wonderful treasures and natural resources here that we can experience
[00:00:17] from the Bay of Fundy to Mount Carlton to all of the various things that are in between.
[00:00:24] So for now, let's get started. North is that the salt that was put down in the winter was killing everything. So we had to figure out how to make it to beautify that. And right now in the process of narrowing Main Street. So I suggested that we get some children to grow some marigolds and that comes it's inclusive. Every child was involved in a course that develops pride in the child and in the community because people were saying, my God, who planted those beautiful miracles in the course, it was the children and their
[00:03:00] teachers. I know I work as a tour guide with the Kila tours and as we're taking cleaning all the rust off the guard rails, cleaning utility poles, cleaned about 400 vacant lots, and took them down almost to all the graffiti in the city. That's fantastic. The Amerigolds that are planted here was that year that you had the Guinness Book of Records, the record year for the number of Amerigolds there as that increased since then.
[00:04:23] It's probably increased since then. We have some very big ones too, but we've done about 230. We took 30 down and We refurbished 30. We never want them to look bad but a lot of them tell the history of St. John and a lot of them are scenes of very very bright colors and flowers and things like that and Bright colors have a very positive effect on people. I saw on your website that there's something called the Marigold Awards
[00:06:45] hit and killed probably five times more than what were one did number of people. And they estimated that it was five years before numbers went back up during the Spanish flu.
[00:06:53] And the way they, they, they figured out the numbers was the largest attendance in those days
[00:06:58] was people going to church. And it took church attendance five years before it came back.
[00:07:04] And I know when I do public speaking that a lot of times now people say, well it's the first time is that to get people to deadhead them because marigolds proliferate when you take the heads off them and they last till November. They're very hardy and weed them and water them. So we're encouraging more and more people on their own properties and their neighborhoods to do that. And if people want to get some aluminum paint and clean over some of the rough spots and guardrails
[00:08:21] and keep your utility poles clean, we've cleaned them all in the city. It took us a few years.