A year in review

 The 2021-2022 school year came and went with a lot of challenges and changes. As I reflect on the past year and prepare for the next, I have been reviewing pictures of the garden through the seasons. Here are the last photos of the fall season, featuring our fall celebration of painted pumpkins and clay finger bowls made with clay found in our garden. A big thank you goes out to our art teacher, Mr. Gilbert, for tempering the clay, teaching us how to design bowls with leaf imprints, and firing them for us. My goal is to stay current with the blog this school year. Fall will once again return pretty soon! 

Thank you for everything, gardeners!

Fall comes to the garden

 This fall Coyote Parent Council gave us the opportunity to decorate our garden with a fall theme for all to enjoy. Students have been peeking out of windows and venturing out on classroom breaks to discover pumpkins (orange and white), scarecrows (big and small), and vibrant mums. Gardening Club is preparing our garden for fall. We will be mulching, planting, and planning for what will grow in the spring. We will end the season with a harvest party for our gardeners and their families.

Our fall gardeners (Alessandro, Chris, Will, and Mia) strike a pose

Hard at work and having fun!

Eventually we will name our scarecrows

A Garden Party

 We ended our summer with a fabulous feast to celebrate our hard work. Our gardeners incorporated fresh ingredients picked from our garden for each dish! 

Will and Amelia enjoy pasta salad with herbs from the garden, including basil and oregano

Alessandro, Jayden, Xavier, and Conner enjoy Caprese salad with fresh basil

 

We invented a refreshing drink for a hot day: Garden Party Punch! It is one half lemonade, on half Sprite, a lemon and or lime slice, and peppermint or basil leaves to taste. 

This was our favorite thing on the menu! 

Mrs. Kurtz grew corn this summer and Eco Club painted rocks to decorate the garden

After a lot of watering, our ground flower made a brilliant comeback. Thank you so much Orquiola family for donating a Lily of the Valley! We are hoping it settled in nicely and will grow back in the spring. 

Although I didn’t capture it as well as I would have liked to, a monarch butterfly graced us with its presence for our last summer meeting. 

Our gardeners on the last day of summer camp! Thank you for a wonderful summer. 

Sensory Garden

Gardening Club members want our garden to be a lovely, relaxing place for students to visit. Soothing scents and textures now surround our benches made of recycled materials. The calming aroma of lavender, oregano, and rosemary and the soft touch of lamb’s ear plants await. 

Our slightly messy peaceful place 

Mia and Xavier revive our velveteen lamb’s ear plants on a hot day

The crew strikes a pose after a lot of hard work & the storm clouds roll in to give our garden some much needed rain

Mush! Mush! Mushroom Compost

 This summer our gardening crew has been extra busy watering, weeding, and hydrating our soil. After doing a bit of research, Alessandro discovered the function of the hyphae part of mushrooms and gave us the brilliant idea of using mushroom compost to replenish our soil and to help it absorb and retain moisture. 

Alessandro and Mia spread mushroom compost 

Will pulls dandelion weeds while the watering crew coordinates 

Just hanging out by the butterfly bush 

Watering and adding our own compost

Xavier and Connor add fresh soil to our lamb’s ear plants; 

Connor is takes home some fresh peppermint from the garden!

 Everyone took a little something (basil, banana peppers, peppermint, oregano) so that we can experiment with recipes that call for ingredients we are growing. 

Well done, everyone!💪🌱

Terracotta + butterfly garden = glorious!

 Gardening Club is officially up and running once again! We recently relocated our terracotta garden (previously located outside of the lunch link) to the butterfly garden so that our school community can enjoy all of our plants at once. This summer we also plan to create a sensory garden around the benches that will allow visitors to enjoy calming scents and interesting textures.

Our gardeners stand proud after the hard work of transferring our terracotta garden to the butterfly garden and adding some mulch! 🪴 

Connor and Alessandro successfully planted a Red Twig Dogwood bush donated by the Featherly family—well done, guys! 

That one day when we showed the thistle weed and dandelions who was in charge. 💪 

Mia creates a rock border around our patches of onions and potatoes. Our junior gardening camp, led by Mrs. Kurtz, plans to grow corn and watermelon in their plots! 

Xavier spots our first tomato! 🍅 

Our flowers are soaking up all the rain & our lilies finally bloomed! 

Allow us to introduce our garden guardian, Jeff Stripey the caterpillar

Mrs. Kurtz and her gardeners spot a monarch in the butterfly bush 🦋