Buzz From the Gardens

January 2016

Brrrrrrrrr. Cold winds blew through our school gardens this past month. While we donned winter coats and hats, our students have been exploring how the birds, plants and insects show their own ways of surviving the winter. Djamila and Jimena have taken out younger classes for bird observations and measuring their own windspans. Older classes learned about our local birds through watercolor art. The birds have enjoyed some extra seeds spread out by the kids. The Life Skills classroom had a blast exploring garden herbs and soil inside during the heavy rains.

Garden beds have been covered and planted with winter crops. Tend, Mend and Mingle parents have given the Pollinator Garden some much needed pruning and our Hardy Grant plants were planted just before the snow fall– 2 native Ceanothus and 6 Kinnickkinnicks. We look forward to these plants rooting down and flowering in the coming years. The heavy rains made it possible to take out some very stubborn blackberries and invading shiny geraniums in the Prairie Garden. The grapevines in the Discovery Garden now have an arched trellis to climb over and the kids are already enjoying being able to walk through it. New signs created by a parent now grace our compost.

We are happy to say that in a week of tshirt sales we were able to sell about 70 garden grey and blue tshirts. We hope to have another preorder in the spring for those interested in having of these beautiful shirts designed by Diane Jacobs, the artist-in-residence who did the artwork for our Outdoor Classroom. Thank you for supporting the PTA and showing your appreciation of our garden program!

A big thank you to Isabel Toledo who has offered to translate this newsletter to Spanish – COMING! We now have the Garden Buzz on the Atkinson PTA website. Thank you for all you do, Isabel!