Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Bring Your Succulent Cuttings & Your Old Shoes!!


Our Fabulous Art Teacher, Allison Bell has begun collecting succulents for a California Native Plant Garden we will start in the spring, it will be located behind the auditorium, near the PE equipment bathrooms. We are really excited about this new garden !




The overall plan is to create a space that has an ornamental and artistic feel using recycled shoes with succulent cuttings planted inside them. We would love to have some shelving built to house them. Alison is also working with her students to create birdhouses with gourds she has recently acquired that will be displayed in the native garden as well. In addition we would like to have seating, benches with some shade, and eventually large raised mound's housing California Native plants. Succulents are so easy to grow. Just snip off a piece from your favorite plant at home and bring it to school. Alison has two boxes outside her classroom where she is collecting both items of request. If you have a moment have Alison show you the first official shoe and succulent that her students have recently created. We are very excited about this project, but we can't accomplish this without our school community, so please bring what you can!

We will be having a work day in all the gardens on Saturday April 5th and would like to start setting up the new native garden at that time. Look for our next post for more details on that day.

One last request, if there are any carpenters out there that would like to donate some time to build shelves & a few benches, we would love to have you ! Please contact Amy or Annie for more information.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Get to know our trees and pass it on...

Our trees have wonderful names!
In the schools courtyard we have a Golden Rain Tree...

...and at the corner of Linda Vista Rd. and Genessee we have a beautiful Indian Coral Tree...

In the K-2 area we have California Sycamores
shading the grass...



...and in our breezeway between the k-2 area and the middle school
area we have a row of Ornamental Pear Trees!

Friday, February 8, 2008

More Inspiration...



Occasionaly it is a good idea to think big and visualize the ultimate goal, no matter how far off. At this point our gardens are modest and need much work, but life is long and everything grows...so here are some photos from UC Santa Cruz Life Lab with examples of how it "could" be...with YOUR help! (For bigger and more detailed pictures click the "inspiration" link at the right!)




They have great examples of "signs" made from wood, mosaic, paint sticks, metal...



...and wonderful educational garden projects...a human sundial... "where on Earth does your food come from?"...and a "Pizza Garden" (Morgans class is going to do this with garlic, tomatos, oregano, basil etc!)

...and an ultimate-great-fantasy-school-outdoor-kitchen-dream!!



...and just a fun idea, a planter desk!
In so many ways we may as well dream big! Our school is full
of great ideas and inspiring people with a wide array of talents.