Hi, My school just started a Gardening club. Yes we are off to a slow start, but I think it is going to work.
I was addressed by a teacher to help plant gardens around our school. We recieved money from the First Class Committee- not tons just enough to get going.
Last spring we rented a sod cutter form a local place who gave us a dicount. We purchased the dirt and recived free mulch from our publics works. We also put out a add in our weekly newsletter about the up comming planting event and askingfor plant donations.
I have a lot of stuff in my yard that I split and used. I just started talking to people to let them know what we were doing and wala.......People said come on over and dig out these bushes and they are yours.
We also went to a local garden store and told them that we were interested in purchasing some trees, told them what it was for and they gave us another discount from the already reduced price.
My viewis just ask for help from the school. If they say there is no money available ask the PTO and put your information in the school newsletter of items that you need. You might be suprised at what you get back.
Also, This March, I am going to have the kids plant some seeds and grow them in the school0part of the curriculum and they can either plant them in the gardens or sell them to raise more funds for the Gardening to be done around the school
One last comment. We recieved over a thousand bulbs for free from the local County extention office. They sell bulbs in the fall. Order in the spring. Do a educational piece on them and your done.
Our PTO has a Landscape committee which is budgeted $400 per year. Our school has basically three major flower beds which the committee maintains. The chair works closely with the district's facilities manager - for example...she made sure they stopped adding 5" of coarse ground mulch to our beds though that was the normal practice and it was smothering our flowers. She also works with the custodial staff to get them to water during dry spells, even in summer. In the past few years, the committee has planted at least 3 flowering trees plus loads of perennials, bulbs, and ornamental grasses. It helps to have a gardener at the helm.
We have a buildings & grounds chairperson who gets a line item in our PTO's budget each year. This year it was $500, which is about 3.5% of our expendable income. Those funds are used every year for things like mulch and flowering plants or bulbs for the beds around the front entrance of the school.
Last year we had several things going on where our school would be in the public eye and those above thought that our dirt yard and brown grass would not look good on tv so a $5000 overhaul was done and it was proposed that we pay $1000 to help, since we had some funds, and that we get hoses and sprinklers for the upkeep. We told the district what we wanted and they took care of it. This was in May and it still looks pretty good. We did suggest getting a committee of parents to volunteer to plant stuff and do some upkeep but I have no idea if this didn't work because the ball was dropped or there is not enough interest. Either way, the custodian tries to keep it up, but we have a pretty big campus.
The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating-in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life. --Anne Morris
Does anyone out there use some of their funds to do some sort of school grounds beautification? -Mostly like purchasing shrubbery, flowers, or a memorial park for retiring or staff who passed away, small landscaping projects. If so, I would like to hear about what you did and how you went about getting it approved, yadda, yadda, yadda.
