Martin's Montrose Gardeners

We are in our third year of gardening. Each graduating class leaves suggestions of projects for the incoming "nubies". We are an urban school; I love getting students "back to nature" who would otherwise ignore it! The first group of fifth graders named the garden in honor of our school's first principal. We have contributed perennials to an existing older elevated garden bed of shrubs. An iris bed has been started as a "living background" behind sitting benches. A pink dogwood was planted to add color balance to the end of the site. Last year's fifth graders released ladybugs to learn about the role of helpful vs. harmful insects in a garden. We are starting a butterfly garden area since five of our classes raise butterflies and wanted a place to release them. We used a mortar/frame/letter kit to make the border for our dogwood. The class chose words for the mortar "bricks" from counseling class on the topic of character traits--- truth, honesty. responsible, etc. This year's class will use the kit to construct a poem for the raised bed: "You must be the change you wish to see."--Ghandi. We would like to start an earthworm bed and study the webs of spiders. Since our garden is located "off campus", every trip of eight blocks (round trip) is a cardio-vascular exercise!

My students will learn how to use the cycle of a garden to rejuvenate and enrich our site.

Gardening provides multiple learning opportunities in all our curricular areas.

My fifth graders received this site as a gift from the city's garden club when they learned we had created a project-based learning unit on the city of South Charleston.