Vision

Our vision is to see ongoing participation in caring for the plants and contributing to the compost bins around our school. We hope that we can build the foundation to create an environment where the student body recognizes the importance of composting food waste and growing new plants from the nutrient rich soil. We envision building on the number of pollination plants and the amount of food produced in our gardens as time progresses.

Action

With the support of LSF project funds we were able to accomplish a wide variety of tasks and initiatives in just one month.

We took action to reduce food waste by composting. The grant money was used to purchase composting bins (2 indoor bins and 1 large tumbling outside bin) to collect the organic material that normally goes to the trash. The goal is to teach the students about the importance of composting in that it reduces waste going to our landfills and the decomposition of organic material results in rich organic matter that can be used as a fertilizer in our gardens. The amount of compost collected by our compost bins daily is quite large which highlights the number of students and staff involved in our mission.

From the LSF funds, the club purchased shrubs such as Potentillas to attract pollinators, and seeds including herbs (sage, thyme, cilantro, and parsley) and vegetable (zucchini, radish, pumpkin, cucumber and pepper). These were started inside, under lamps, by the Environment Club and participating science classes to encourage germination. We will transplant them into the newly constructed outdoor planters when we get warmer temperatures. The outdoor planters will be filled with nutrient rich soil from the composters.

As this project continues, we hope to see everyone playing a part in making sustainable actions a part of their lifestyle.

Reflection & Celebration

We kickstarted this project by taking on Environmental Awareness Week. We had a tree planting ceremony to make the student body aware of the projects we would be taking on. This included a speech from our club leader, free trees given to students for their yards at home and a school grounds cleanup. The garden boxes were built, composting well established, soil prepped and the planting began. Many hands make light work. As we reflect back we noticed that it wasn’t just the environment and school grounds that benefited from this. The entire team involved learned how to work together as a community and share a vision. In one month, we were able to start composting, planting new flower beds and start a vegetable garden to grow nutritious food. In the Fall, we will celebrate our success by harvesting our produce and developing new goals and initiatives and continue the old.