Garden Site Selected!

Our 2nd Community Garden meeting was held on December 3rd. Kerry Renta, from Real School Gardens, presented the proposed plan for our garden! He then had a time for students, parents and teachers to offer suggestions and ask questions.

The BES community is excited about the plans for our garden!

We selected the area for our garden. The garden area is on the east side of our school. This area will be accessible by all classrooms, visible from the street, and provide our plants with enough sunlight to grow.

Mr. Renta looked at the sketches the BES community created at our first meeting, to come up with the proposed garden sketch below.

First Community Design Meeting

Our first community design meeting was a huge success! We had over 80 people come to help design our school garden. Here are some pictures from our night.

Birdville Elementary enjoyed getting together as a community to begin the design process for our garden.

Kerry began our meeting by explaining what we would be doing.

Students, Parents, Community members, and teachers worked together to design our dream gardens.

After each group designed their dream garden, we displayed the sketches in the cafeteria for everyone to see.

Our next garden meeting will be held on Wednesday, December 3rd, at 6:00 pm. See you there!

Community Garden Meeting

Our first community garden meeting will be held on Thursday, November 6th at 6:00 pm in the BES cafeteria. A light dinner will be provided.

At this meeting we will begin discussing the design elements and creating a shared vision for our garden.
Everyone is invited to attend! Be sure to RSVP on the note that will be going home soon.
See you there!

Dream Garden Activity

All teachers were asked to complete the Dream Garden Activity with their class. Teachers asked the students what they want to see or have in our school garden. All the responses have been added to an affinity diagram and placed on our Garden Bulletin board. The children did well with this assignment and dreamed BIG! Be sure to stop in to see what your children had to say!

Garden Retreat

The Birdville Garden Team attended a Real School Garden Retreat this weekend. We learned how to pick a good spot for a garden. We practiced conducting a site inventory of Historic Fire station No. 5, home of the Real School Garden Offices.

When planning the perfect place for your garden, you should consider the natural conditions that are already present. According to Real School Gardens, you should also keep in mind the following factors:

Microclimate - Sun, shade, wind and temperature

Topography - Slope, or steepness of the site.

Drainage - Where does the water flow?

Soil - What kind of soil do you have? Sandy, clay, silt, or loam

Existing Vegetation - Trees, shrubs and grass

Existing conditions - Parking lots, sidewalks, playgrounds

Wildlife - Animal habitats

Ecology - The natural history of your area

Utilities - Location of power, gas, cable, water and phone lines

Views - Notice the good and bad

We also learned how to generate ideas of creating a dream garden. We were told to DREAM BIG! Each garden team member wrote down the items they would like to see in their dream garden. When we go back to BES, we will do this same activity with the BES staff to see what the teachers want out of our garden. Then, the teachers will complete the activity with their classes to see what the students want in our garden. Once all the ideas are compiled, we will be able to assess the community, staff and students want in our garden.

WELCOME!

Welcome to Birdville Elementary's Blog. We hope to keep parents, students, staff, and community members up to date on the progress of our school garden.

BES received a grant from REAL school gardens to plant a garden on our campus. Please visit their website at: http://realschoolgardens.org/ to learn more about this incredible organization.

Birdville decided that we would like to have a learning garden in March, 2008 to enhance our learning in the classrooms. Once teachers began discussing the possibility of having a school garden and all the uses, we decided to apply for a grant from Real School Gardens. We were selected to join the REAL school garden team in the summer of 2008!
We are so excited to begin this journey learning how to plan for, install, and maintain a school garden! Be sure to check back often to read about updates on our garden. You can also visit our Garden Bulletin Board in the lobby of BES.