A Rainy Gardening Day in Preparation for the Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony

Posted by Andy Hinds

In preparation for the March 3, 2014 ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the completion of the new front entrance of Jefferson Elementary, some Friends of Jefferson members and other volunteers spent several hours on Sunday morning tidying up the “Literacy Garden” outside the library. An, Rebecca, Tera, Shamli, Jordi, and I represented FOJ, and Principal Francisco Morga was out there picking up trash and hauling mulch with us. Jeremy who works for environmental services for the school district kindly joined us, as did Ami, a community member who lives nearby.

As luck would have it, the week before the ribbon-cutting ceremony coincided with the only big rainstorm we have had all winter! The conditions were not perfect for gardening, but ever the bright-siders, we agreed that it was a lot of fun to actually go out and do stuff in the pouring rain rather than cowering in fear, as we Southern Californians tend to. While we couldn’t plant everything we had hoped due to the soil conditions, we got it spruced up and had a number of happy little plants ready to greet the visitors at the ceremony.

I asked FOJ member Tera Vessels, one of the hardcore gardeners in the group, to explain the history, vision, and hopes for the future of the Literacy Garden:

The garden was started as a true labor of love my Toni Burnett. Toni is a teacher and several years ago she removed a bunch of bird of paradise and created a garden space. She got donations of the planter boxes and she got North Park Nursery to donate the citrus tree. Toni purchased plants and seeds with her own money and the garden was born. Toni has used it to help several years of students learn about plants and how things grow.

When the construction started the garden was off limits because of liability so it became neglected. Finally construction finished and the ribbon ceremony was coming so we all decided to revamp the garden with the hopes of making it an even bigger, better part of the school and program.

Toni and I met on a Wednesday afternoon and with the help of her son who attends Jefferson we cleaned out weeds, groomed plants and moved 2 blueberry bushes to a shady location (I brought peat moss!). I added some thornless boysenberry plants, and there were strawberries so we now have a “berry” nice garden.

On the recent rainy Sunday, we gathered to plant different veggies (provided by Jeremy)--very tiny tomatoes, lettuce, artichoke, broccoli, peas and a few other starts were planted to fill in the beds so that the garden would look nice for the ceremony.  All of the volunteers were soaked but stoked.

The big plan is to claim the space by the fence, which we covered with mulch on Sunday. We would like to move the mulch to the side, get a load of compost and work it into the soil and then add cheerful pollinator attracting plants.  We see the Ascelepias (attracts monarch butterflies) hollyhocks (I have some to donate) sunflowers (easy for kids to plant, I have seeds), salvia, gurea (I have some starts) lavendula, achillia yarrow, passion vine, fennel, cosmos and the like to build a colorful happy border

It was way too wet that weekend so working the dirt would have destroyed it. We are working with the district to gain permission to keep the space as fun plants not landscape. I believe Principle Morga is helping us gain permission. We would need another adult day to get the compost, remove grass and work the dirt so that it can be planted. We could actually have kids help plant. They like it.

Moving forward we have lots of plans: do stepping stones with the kids, maybe in the after school program? Wall mosaics, tables and chairs for an outdoor classroom...the wish list goes on.

Thank you, Tera, and everyone else involved, for helping get some momentum going on what will hopefully be a meaningful aspect of our kids education!