Melina Trimarchi

Melina Trimarchi is an environmental educator, artist and community organizer based in Montreal and Saint-Paulin, Quebec. Across multiple schools, Melina leads two impactful environmental education programs. Plants Are Medicine is a year-long initiative rooted in Indigenous knowledge systems and food sovereignty, encouraging students to explore their relationship with the land through plants and traditional knowledge. Her second program, Deep Roots, is a behavioural intervention program that helps students strengthen emotional regulation and well-being through connection to nature. While working in these programs, Melina uses a teaching philosophy guided by empathy, respect for all living things and belief that relationships are at the heart of learning.

For this remarkable work, Melina has been named a runner-up for the 2025 Edward Burtynsky Award for Teaching Excellence in Environmental Education. 

Raised by parents who questioned authority and prioritized connection to the natural world, Melina developed an appreciation for critical thinking and ecological stewardship early in life. She has worked in a range of outdoor education settings and found that, regardless of the environment, students transform when they feel seen, respected, and grounded in something real, such as soil, stories or shared meals. 

Melina doesn’t teach about the environment, but with it. She invites students to see themselves as part of a living system, recognizing their power and responsibility within it. Her work aims to create physical and emotional spaces where curiosity, safety and wonder can coexist. For Melina, her work is an ongoing practice of listening to children, Elders and the land, and using that wisdom to build something that is hopeful. She is driven by the recognition that this work is not a luxury, but a tool for liberation, emotional resilience, and collective survival. 

Branch 2: Experiential Learning/Sending Out Roots

Melina believes environmental education must engage both the hands and the heart. She develops lessons rooted in direct sensory experiences that help students build real, personal relationships with the land. 

In Plants Are Medicine students return to the same community garden throughout the seasons, caring for it through planting, watering, composting and harvesting. Melina talks to the students about the stories of each plant, such as where it comes from, who uses it, how it gives back. Through their involvement in the garden, students begin to see it as not just a project, but as a living community they are part of. 

In her Deep Roots program, which supports students who have struggled in traditional classroom settings, Melina helps them develop emotional tools through time in nature, such as deep listening and reflection. The group is currently building a Three Sisters Garden from heirloom seeds that were saved from her micro-farm. Over time, Melina has begun to notice the students starting to calm, open up and feel a sense of belonging that indoor environments could not offer them. 

Branch 3: Integrated Learning/The Flow of Knowledge

Melina does not treat environmental inquiry as a separate subject, but as a lens through which relationships can be understood. In her Plants Are Medicine program students explore science through seed germination, soil health and pollination. History and Social Studies are also integrated, by examining the impacts of colonialism on food systems, plant knowledge and the Land Back movement. 

A large component of the Plants Are Medicine program takes place at Jardin Paillon, a community garden run by local artists, who use plants in their fibre arts. At the garden, students learn how different plants, such as marigolds and indigo, become natural dyes, connecting traditional plant use with contemporary creative practices. 

To ground their learning in real-world examples, Melina guided students to explore two issues: the effects of climate change on local pollinators and urban food deserts. Investigating the first led to a student-led initiative to plant pollinator-friendly species throughout the neighbourhood, fostering environmental responsibility and civic engagement. Discussions about food deserts connected their work in the garden to food justice, helping students understand how access to fresh food is tied to both environmental and social systems. Through these discussions students began to see that their actions matter far beyond the classroom. 

In preparation for a visit to Kahnawake, Melina introduced students to basic Kanienʼkéha phrases as a way of showing respect and beginning to build relationships with Mohawk knowledge holders. The visit helped students understand that the land they learn on has a living history and that meaningful environmental education must include Indigenous voices. 

Putting it Back Together

The four branches of Natural Curiosity – inquiry, experiential, integrated, and sustainability education – came together most clearly in Melina’s Plants Are Medicine project. The project embodies her teaching philosophy, which understands learning as a relational, land-based, and empathetic process. In Plants Are Medicine, learning was experiential, with hands in the soil, senses engaged, and reflections grounded in real experiences. It was integrated and multi-disciplinary, weaving together science, math, history, and social studies in creative ways. It was also action-oriented, as students led a pollinator planting initiative, prepared care kits for local shelters, and gifted seedlings to community gardens, reinforcing that caring for the land means caring for one another. Finally, it was inquiry-based, as Melina modelled curiosity, asked questions without answers, and let student wonder guide their explorations.

Integrating Indigenous Perspectives

Melina has made a commitment to incorporating Indigenous perspectives into her work. This commitment is rooted in deep respect, humility and an understanding that this work is ongoing. She approaches these perspectives not as something to “teach” but as a way to listen, unlearn and shift how she related to land, community and education. 

Central to Melina’s environmental programming is the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Across the age groups she teaches, the book’s stories and teachings are incorporated into the program, and its framework of reciprocity, gratitude, and Indigenous ways of knowing guides both the content and tone of learning. The book helps students see that science and story can coexist and inform one another. 

In addition to integrating these perspectives into her teaching, Melina has also been learning Kanienʼkéha herself in preparation for her class's visit to Kahnawake. This allows her to share basic phrases with her students and serves as a gesture of respect and recognition that the land they live and learn on has a living language and culture. 

Melina also draws on what she has learned in the Four Seasons of Indigenous Learning program. This training has helped her recognize the difference between appropriation and respectful integration, and has prompted her to continually reflect on her position and responsibility as a settler educator. 

A key element of her teaching in past years has been organizing hands-on workshops with artists from local Indigenous communities, and she hopes to continue offering them in the future. These experiences help students connect land-based learning with cultural expression, and learn that sustainability includes art, memory and tradition. 

Innovation and Impact

Melina’s approach to environmental education is grounded in innovation that is relational, sensory and community-centered. Her two main initiatives, Plants Are Medicine and Deep Roots have been deeply impactful within her community.

Plants Are Medicine has turned a concrete schoolyard into a living classroom and a site of intergenerational exchange. Students who struggle in traditional classroom settings, have found purpose in the garden, engaging in meaningful, hands-on learning. It has been a deeply collaborative effort, involving families and fellow educators in workshops and garden activities.

Deep Roots supports students with behavioural challenges, by using outdoor, sensory-based experiences to foster emotional regulation and connection. Through activities such as counting sounds, building shelters and journaling in quiet spaces, educators have observed greater emotional awareness, calmer transitions and stronger peer relationships. 

Believing that environmental education is most powerful when co-created with students, colleagues, and the wider community, Melina advocates for circular rather than hierarchical learning. Her work has inspired fellow educators to reimagine classroom management through empathy and connection. She has facilitated professional development for over 300 educators and mentored three McGill student teachers, guiding them in integrating land-based learning into their teaching philosophies and practice. 

By Andreas Gross, Natural Curiosity Program Assistant