 WE HELP TO MAKE SCHOOL GARDENS MORE EXCITING!
Just before the pandemic, we completed transformation/upgrade of Santa Cruz High School's garden.
The teacher in charge of the garden was ready to give up and have the few fruit trees that were still alive ploughed under.
Why? because it was so overgrown that school grounds' maintenance crew was not able to cut the grass there without injuring trees or damaging equipment.
Fortunately students pushed for the restoration of the garden.
We were invited to fix the garden, which looked very unsightly, with piles of trash, broken glass, rocks, concrete, tree branches, overgrown with prickly thistles.
It was also bone-dry. Teachers and students left for the summer and we were handed the keys to the shed.
Yosi and Slawek went through all of the complex paperwork required by the school system to volunteer there.
At least one of us had to be there when we worked. We redesigned the garden, enlarging it ten-fold, making it wheelchair accessible and easy to cut the grass.
We planted lots of interesting plants: from pepino dulce, icecream beans, bananas, lulos, goldenberries,
mountain papayas, lemon guavas, tree tomatoes, Pakistani mulberries, sugar cane and lots more!
Half way through the summer the school district noticed what we were doing. The gardeen was all cleaned-up, lots of new plants added.
They jumped in and installed new, state of the art automatic watering system, with controls in the shed.
They placed water outlets in convenient places that we pointed out. Yosi cleaned-up the shed and organized tools there. We labeled all plants with iNaturalist.
Please contact us via e-mail if you would like to help your local school garden to become a magical place,
where kids love to hang out and learn about gardening. We are happy to share our plants. We want kids to develop bonds with the Nature as early as possible.
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