Saplings of Shigar

Published August 3, 2014
Photos by Kuslum Ebrahim
Photos by Kuslum Ebrahim

When Tahereh Sheerazie, a garden designer from Pasedena, California, offered to design the garden for the Abruzzi Higher Secondary School, in Baltistan’s Shigar Valley, back in 2009, little did she know about the cracks and crevices she’d have to negotiate on her journey. Four years later, and despite the project still being in its infancy, the garden is helping young minds and kindred spirits bloom. But then, it’s not your usual school backyard garden.

The Abruzzi School, in the picturesque village of Siankhor is the only co-educational institution in the region, with classes that start from Class 5 to 10. A beautifully designed structure constructed by the Aga Khan Cultural Service Pakistan (AKCSP), the school was gifted to the people of Shigar by the government of Italy on the Golden Jubilee of the first climb of K2 by Italian climbers.

Depending on which side of the classroom you are sitting, Abruzzi’s garden can be a learning resource for the students and a teaching tool for the teachers. Every lesson a student learns in a classroom can be practiced through a hands on experience using earth, rock, water, wind and plants. It is like a laboratory where lessons are drawn from nature, there and then, rather than from text books. Book learning and hands on learning go together here.

“I noticed that the children were studying in a disconnected manner, and language seemed to be a major barrier to their comprehension,” says Sheerazie.


In the foot of the Karakorum Mountains is a school with a garden classroom. By using the environment as a teaching tool, education is finally shining over Shigar Valley


The more she observed, the more she realised the need to ground their education in nature and “real life applications of the subject matter”. She believed if this connection was made, teaching would be less arduous for the teaching staff as well.

The best part? Students themselves designed what shape their garden should take. In the pro­­cess, they realised the possi­bilities were endless.

Photos by Kuslum Ebrahim
Photos by Kuslum Ebrahim

“They first sketched their ideas and then drew their plan to scale on the 25’ x 25’ space allocated on the grounds. They demarcated their plans with natural materials like rocks, rope, and paper,” Sheerzie explained.

Seventeen-year-old Saeeda Iraqi remembers it well. “We designed the garden three years back. We wanted a cricket pitch, a separate one for the girls, a water channel running through parts of the garden; fruit trees, and a stage where we could perform.”

Today, all those elements can be seen and then some more. They have a cycling track, an outdoor classroom; a herb garden, vegetable patches etc. There is a compost bin to be used as manure for the garden. But the work is far from over.


Seventeen-year-old Saeeda Iraqi remembers it well. “We designed the garden three years back. We wanted a cricket pitch, a separate one for the girls, a water channel running through parts of the garden; fruit trees, and a stage where we could perform.”


Sheerazie also hopes that, once complete, the space can be opened after school hours to the children of the local community to enjoy and learn. “This is like having Aitchison College in our midst; only one child from this village studies here; the rest are from neighbouring areas and belong to mostly well-off families,” she describes. Most of the hard work in bringing the physical spaces to their present shape has been done by the Siankhor village masons and labourers.

The students at the Abruzzi School “learn by doing”. They learnt the laws of friction; how to do ratios, fractions, measurements; finding the difference between hydrophytes (plants that grow in aquatic environment), xerophytes (plants such as cacti that require less water) and halophytes (plants that grow in water with high salinity)...the list goes on.

“Our math teacher divided our class of 30 students into 10 groups and we made ‘shakh’ (local name for a fence made by intertwining young willow branches) around a vegetable patch to protect it from goats and learnt how to apply measurements for an even border,” explained 17-year-old Muzammil Hussain, who studies in Class 10.

But that is not all. They have to document everything that they do in their garden journals. “The concepts are clearer in my mind and I have noticed it’s easier during exam preparation when I am learning from text books. I can clearly visualise what I did and don’t need to learn by rote,” he said.

When learning is not a chore: students arrive from far and wide to the Abruzzi School, simply because of the horticultural activities on offer, Photos by Kuslum Ebrahim
When learning is not a chore: students arrive from far and wide to the Abruzzi School, simply because of the horticultural activities on offer, Photos by Kuslum Ebrahim

According to Sheerazie, the children belong to agrarian families and often struggle with both Urdu and English. “When they are taught in languages they barely understand they will not understand concepts,” she explained. On the other hand, she said, “When they are taught in the language of agriculture, something they have grown up with, they understand intuitively.” She finds nature to be the best teaching resource.

Nazia Batool, 14, studying in Class 7, runs over to a row of brightly painted oil cans and brings two of them over. These had been turned into pots. She shows the herbs her class had planted. “We have grown coriander in all. We watered some with salty water and the plants just died; those which were watered heavily wilted, only the plants that were given water sparingly survived,” she explained.

But the day when they made tomato soup was the one she remembers fondly. She said they learnt math (measurement and proportions), economics (how much it costs) and science (the nutritional value and vitamins found in tomatoes).

But teaching differently has not been without its set of challenges.

Mohammad Hasnain, who teaches math, physics and general science, and has been with the school since it started in 2010, says: “I find the children tend to get distracted easily, outdoors.”

Hussain, however, says, he can concentrate better as he enjoys this method. “I don’t feel sleepy and my mind hardly ever wanders now.”

But it’s a slow process, nevertheless. Hasnain says at the back of his mind, there is always this worry of “how I’d complete the course prescribed by the education board if the school puts so much emphasis on teaching through practicals”.

Sheerazie’s garden may have won the hearts and minds of the students, her struggle with the teachers continues as they are reluctant to use it as a teaching tool. “There is resistance from the teachers,” she says candidly. “This alternate method requires thinking creatively; managing time better; planning the lesson in advance and the teachers are not willing to do it.”

While conceding that acti­­­­vity-based learning is better since children “absorb way better,” Hasnain says teachers need to be trained for this kind of teaching.

But Sheerazie disagrees saying: “There is no training required; they just have to think out of the box and show commitment!”

No quitter, this woman who gives up the comforts of life to live among the locals for over four months, (earlier she spent as much as eight months in a year) and volunteers, believes that it would take a good five years before everyone settles into this kind of teaching and learning. Even financing the project has not been easy as the local community is not interested in putting in their money into such a radical idea. Though frustrating at times, it has not deterred Sheerazie from her goal -- of integration of school curriculum into garden teaching, completion of the garden, but more importantly, of finding a local garden director to continue her endeavour.

In a way, her pilot project is providing an experiential learning model for other educationists across Pakistan to rethink the definition of education.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 3rd, 2014

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