Garden and Grounds

Weeding and Digging Party

Thursday and Friday (August 30 and 31) starting at 10am with Trudy Moon and Jud. If you have an extra pitch fork or hoe, please bring it. Lemonade and gloves will be provided!

August 27 Garden Meeting Minutes

Thank you to those of you who came to help discuss ideas, volunteer and work yesterday (Mon. Aug 27) at the New School!

1. What's going on

• The Club - Since there is so much work that needs to happen just in terms of cleaning up our campus, the Garden Committee of the Outdoors Club has now become the Garden and Grounds Committee to incorporate all of the grounds work we'll be doing.

• The Garden - As most of you know, the club received a $2500 grant from the Centennial Foundation to build a community garden at Desert. However, there is still quite a bit of construction and moving happening at the new campus, so it isn't possible to finalize a spot or begin working on the large elaborate garden planned out in our grant application. At the same time, we want to be able to keep the Centennial Foundation's support and there are many smaller beds that we can still do a lot with, so we'll be spending most of the fall working on those areas.

• Rainwater catchment systems - Desert is required to have at least 5000 gallons of rainwater catchment available. We hope to have much more than that, but right now, the construction company is still looking into getting and placing rain barrels. For now, we'll just use hose water.

• Collaboration- The more of the student body we can get involved, the better! Leos and NHS would like to help with volunteer projects and probably have many of their own ideas as well. It would also be great to talk to Sheila Miles' art classes to see if they would be interested in contributing to the artistic design of the campus. We already have some great parent volunteers and could use more! For the most part, everyone seemed to agree that it would be best for individuals interested in organizing a project to simply run it by Jud, Mr. Alei, Kim and/or I, and then take it on. There are so many things to work on, so if you have ideas, please share them!

• The funds - We're still waiting to hear responses from Payne's, Home Depot and Lowes, but we are hoping that they will give us a matching funds donation for other plants and building materials that the CF grant doesn't cover.

2. Project Ideas/What we're working on

• Building a labyrinth - Courtenay Mathey (in charge of the construction at Desert) would like to lead this project.

• Senior orchard - (suggested by Zoe Gibson) - Each senior (24) could plant a tree with a 7th grader at the beginning of the year as a part of their Senior mentorship. This could become an annual tradition!

• Glass bottle walkway/path - we're going to want to build many different paths to make our campus more accessible and attractive. One possible path idea was to border the path with glass bottles buried upside-down.

• Decorating fronts of stairs  - (and paths leading to the tents) - People could set in pieces of glass, ceramic, marbles, etc. to give the stairs an artistic look.

• Compost pile - We set aside a spot for our compost pile right next to the main parking lot and have straw bales from the old garden to build it with. We're hoping to get some bins set up around the school for compost collection. We'll need 5 - 10 compost monitors for daily bin emptying.

• Cactus garden - As we walked around the perimeter of the campus, we found many transplantable cacti. We are still considering possible locations for this garden.

• Hoop houses - We currently have one set up and we plan on trying to build or purchase at least 4 more for growing winter veggies.

• Garden Advisory Competition - Each grade could clean up, plant and decorate one of the main parking lot medians as a part of the advisory competition.

• Spreading wildflowers - To make our campus more friendly looking from the outside, we discussed spreading wild sunflower seeds around the fence border.

• Entryway garden beds - Mark Tiarks, who is a landscaper, has offered to lead in planting and designing the entryway garden beds.

3. What we've done

• De-weeded and tilled the soil in one of the garden beds in entryway
• Finished flagstone-gravel paths to the tents
• Brought over all garden materials from old school and set up one hoop house
• Purchased new garden tools the club (our first $400 of grant money well spent!)
• Looked at two possible locations for the larger garden we want to create
• David and Felicia Tapia built us wonderful steps up to the swings and tents behind Admin building

4. Upcoming

• This Thursday and Friday (Aug 30 and 31) Trudy Moon has volunteered to lead a Weeding and Digging Party at the new school starting at around 10 am (if you can make it there earlier, please feel free to do so as it will get hot outside pretty fast!). Lemonade and gloves will be provided!
• In the first few weeks of school, the Outdoors Club is going to organize an all campus walk for anyone who's interested in getting to know our extensive 26-acre campus. We will be setting a date as soon as school starts.

5. Also of importance

• If you haven't accepted your invite to become an author on the Club Blog (daoutdoorsclub.blogspot.com) please do so! If you need to be invited again, or aren't sure how to post/comment/use the blog, please let me know!
• Though there's plenty of gardening and grounds work to be done at the new campus, we'd also like to keep the environmental activism and awareness part of our club alive. The Garden and Grounds Committee will be sistered by the Awareness Committee, which will work on keeping the school informed of environmental news, petitions and events.

Thank you all. Please email me with any questions or ideas you might have. I believe that we are starting into a great year!

Cora - cora.cliburn@gmail.com

Garden and New School Projects Meeting
New campus enthusiasts! Now that the new classroom building is in place, the Garden and Grounds Committee of the Desert Outdoors Club is ready to get moving on our community garden. We will be holding an organizational meeting and work party on Monday, August 27 from 8:00 - 8:45 am at the new school. During the meeting part of the agenda we will be identifying our skills and interests, take a quick tour of the garden site(s), and begin to develop a list of projects that people want to work on - everything from design to collecting and turning compost! Please be prompt as several of us need to be at the teacher inservice which starts at 9:00 am.

We have a preliminary list of projects that are underway so bring your work gloves if you can stay on after the meeting to work. There is lots of weeding to do along with other projects.

Thanks for bringing your ideas and energy to make the Desert campus inspiring, productive, and beautiful,
Cora Cliburn, Outdoor Club President
Jud Osborn, Bob Alei, Kim Kurian - Garden Committee faculty sponsors

P.S. For those of you who aren't quite ready to be early morning wakers, feel free to come a little later!