Watershed gardens beautify schools, enhance learning
By Sande Snead CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Third-graders Keller Baker and Kira Lindamood prepare the soil in Reams Road Elementary School's vegetable and herb garden for spring planting.

While few school grounds would win contests for aesthetic appeal, 19 Chesterfield schools now boast watershed gardens and bioscapes that earned Watershed Action Awards from Friends of Chesterfield's Riverfront.

Using funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chesapeake Bay and Watershed Education and Training (B-WET) grant program, Friends of Chesterfield's Riverfront volunteers and Chesterfield County Public Schools teachers planned and created schoolyard gardens to enhance watershed instruction and environmental education.

"We took the program to all 12 middle schools in the first year of the grant in 2003. Then, we hit 18 elementary schools in the second year and another 18 elementary schools in the third year. We trained two teachers from each school," said Janit Llewellyn, former executive director of Friends of Chesterfield's Riverfront. "We held three sessions for teachers including one day spent digging in the dirt. We coached them, gave them maps of their schools and they developed a program to use in their curriculum. These were really enthusiastic people who were so creative. We had art teachers, special ed teachers - whoever was interested in the program. I thought, 'No wonder we have such good schools in Chesterfield County.' They came up with all these great ideas and nothing stopped them."

Friends of Chesterfield's Riverfront volunteers and teachers at Spring Run Elementary School used grant money to build a water garden at the school.

Each participating school was given a $500 stipend to pay for plants and other materials. Many schools leveraged the funding and went out into the community to ask for more.

"Chalkley Elementary raised money and grew their funding to $22,000 in in-kind donations," said Cynthia Wright, science teacher consultant at the Instructional Division Center (IDC) for Chesterfield County Public Schools. "Their garden has benches and different areas dedicated to specific SOLs (Standards of Learning). Reams [Elementary] School used mosaic tiles in their garden. Other schools have developed peanut or cotton gardens. One is a cockle bells and seashells garden where children's literature is studied. A lot of schools have butterfly gardens because they are easy to maintain and take care of. Each school interpreted their garden differently."

Llewellyn, who is now an environmental program planner for the Department of Recreation and Conservation, pointed out that the gardens are all geared to the SOLs.

"Studies show that when children are outdoors and experience hands-on learning, they absorb information more quickly and remember it later," she said.

All of the gardens also have an affect on the Chesapeake Bay and in the bay watershed.

"We might not be on the water, but the children are learning that if you fertilize too much or at the wrong time of year, that impacts the bay," Llewellyn said. "While the grant is finished, we have all of these wonderful places where children can learn about water quality and the environment. I hope these gardens are maintained and even expanded. Children are not getting outdoors enough anymore, and in addition to educating them and beautifying school grounds, this program gets children into the outdoors."