School Sows, Grows With New Gardens
Balboa Boulevard Magnet School has taken up California Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin’s ambitious challenge of having a garden in every school: The Northridge elementary school has two.
Planted last August, the dual gardens are now in full spring bloom and have been rich with lessons all year long.
Picture student gardeners--clad in Pokemon shirts--collecting bug specimens, magnifying flowers to sketch, and using mathematical concepts to landscape. The gardens are large enough to accommodate multiple classes working side by side.
About 6,000 hours of volunteer work by students, school administrators, teachers and parents transformed what had become a weed patch for one of the gardens; the other was an unused playground.
Now both spaces are fusions of color with California poppies, sweet peas and nasturtiums, to name a few. One garden has a pond--a popular spot for students to check up on the goldfish that shares it with a bunch of mosquito fish and apple snails.
“It took 267 gallons of water to fill this pond,” said Evan Smoller, 7, a first-grader who lives in Los Angeles.
While other kids are harvesting crops or digging up weeds, Evan likes counting things in the garden. “Look! I have 11 roly-poly bugs in my hand,” he said.
There’s so much to do, it’s hard to keep up with all the activity.
Two fifth-graders have spent much of their free time this spring mapping a walkway with square-foot pieces of paper, using a landscaper’s blueprints as their guide.
“The hardest part was determining the turns,” said Marc Snetiker, 10, wiping sweat from his brow on a recent hot, sunny day.
Marc and Kieran Gupta have been building the twisting pathway in their spare time at school. The two usually finish their classroom assignments early and then head outside to the garden.
Now, they are busy with shovels, preparing the pathway for mulch and a brick border--work they hope to complete by their graduation next month.
“We hope we get it done,” Marc says. But if not, they know students next fall will pick up where they left off.
The school collectively got a green thumb after teachers Linda Conlon and Marilyn Ewing asked to do something a little different with the dead spaces, while the school was undergoing other major renovations.
“What we learned from this was we could be creative,” said Ewing, who teaches second grade. “We didn’t have to have things the way they always were. We could do something different.”
The garden project was funded by portions of a $25,000 Anne and Kirk Douglas Playground grant, Proposition BB funds and a neighborhood matching grant for $5,000, as well as donations and discounted supplies and services from local vendors.
Garden work and appreciation are now a permanent part of the school curriculum.
Next year, students will design and tend five areas in one garden, showing various Mediterranean plants and species. And a pergola--an arbor with a lattice roof--will be installed in the garden closest to the library. The shaded space will provide areas for book reading.
“It’s like paradise,” said first-grade teacher Conlon.
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KUDOS
Latino journalists: Six San Fernando Valley students have been awarded scholarships by the California Chicano News Media Assn., which annually provides gifts to Latino students pursuing journalism careers.
Those honored include Cal State Northridge students David Carrillo of Sylmar and Maria Guadalupe Ortiz Briones of Tujunga; Santa Monica College students Anthony McCartney of North Hollywood and Rosa Ramirez of Mission Hills; Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student Cindy Carcamo of Chatsworth; and California Lutheran University student Josefina Huerta of Thousand Oaks.
The association was founded in 1972 to encourage Latino employment in the news media and to foster fair and accurate news coverage.
Land lover: Carl Strom, an 11th-grader at Reseda High School, has won a $1,000 U.S. Savings Bond for a project he created for “Generation Earth”--an environmental program coordinated by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works and TreePeople, a nonprofit education group.
Students from grades six to 12 submitted projects showing ways to safeguard the environment. Strom’s submission--called “Chaparral Wildfires and Hydrophobic Soils”--showed that certain native plants can safeguard Southern California hills better during fire season.
Plants like the chamise, he indicated, absorb water better when burned, which helps to conserve water and reduces runoff and soil erosion.
Strom received his award--donated by the Southern California Gas Co.--during the 50th annual Los Angeles County Science Fair, held at the Los Angeles Convention Center last month.
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