An Idea Takes Root .....
In the summer of 2011, the district established a school garden in a previously underused grassy area behind Greendale High School. With the support and expertise of the UW Extension’s Master Gardener Program, the Greendale Team set to work in creating and implementing a plan. This garden area is the ideal location for the school district to develop and maintain an outdoor classroom for use by students of various abilities and in multiple grade levels.
The outdoor classroom offers a practical location for science experiments and instruction. Students collaborate across grade levels in learning valuable lessons about the world around them and how this stewardship of the earth is essential. In addition to work in planning, planting, growing, harvesting, and general education regarding the garden, high school special ed/job training students learn to prepare a variety of foods from the garden to share with other students.
Since the original garden creation, several improvements have been made. Initial challenges with local wildlife such as deer and raccoons catalyzed the addition of a fence around the garden. This helped to tremendously increase the usable yield of the garden.
The short Wisconsin growing season and frigid winters led the garden team to pursue a hoop house. This structure enabled earlier planting of vegetables and also allowed late second plantings without fear of frost damage.
Initially, water for the garden was accessed through long garden hoses attached to the high school building external spigots. Although this was functional, it was not quite optimal to continually attach and detach hoses to allow for the maintenance crews to cut the grass around the school building. Non-potable water lines were put in and now the garden has water available within the fenced area.
The latest addition to the garden is a beautiful pergola. This provides another shaded classroom area for students and has also served as a structure to support a local Wisconsin crop of hops vines.
|