A school makeover
The plant science students (Melissa Leiker and Colby Leggett) under the supervision of Mrs. Janet Gottstine have been busy this year. For their landscaping curriculum, they took on a project of beatifying the school. They started by deciding what parts of the school they were going to work on, and designed each area and sketched it out. They spent many weeks preparing the ground and then planting those areas. They also hauled rock and put down cottonseed hulls as weed barriers. Pat and Dave Thomas and Lynette Stockman generously donated the plants that were planted. The students went and dug the plants that they needed and transplanted them at the school. The areas they chose to landscape included the high school and Elementary offices and the south end of the Elementary school as well as around the Trojan limestone sign.
This project allowed them to learn the ins and outs of landscaping. They were able to design, install, and learn the different varieties of flowers. They also learned how to prep the ground and prepare the bed for landscaping, and how and when to water. They hope that by next year the pampass grass and all the other perennials they planted will make the school look beautiful. They are done with this project for now, because of the weather, but in the spring, they will fertilize and put out annual containers. They are in the process of figuring out when to plant the annual seeds and hope to grow a majority of the annuals they will use for the containers themselves.
The class also invited the Kindergarten through 4th grade students to plant with them. They helped the kids plant and explained to them what they were doing and a little bit of information about each plant. Mrs. Gottstine’s Intro to Technology class of 7th graders even got in the action and helped prep some of the ground and did a little planting. It was a big project, but the students did a great job!