Category: Garden

By Elizabeth Ebinger

Our kindergartners had their first garden recess of the school year on Friday. The kids had several stations to visit, and the mister was on for those who needed a quick cool-off.

In the outdoor classroom, the students were given clipboards, a small piece of paper and a Sharpie so they could draw a picture of something that they saw in the garden. The kids could also work at the woodworking station, where they wore gloves and sanded.

Also on Friday, our older students used plants for paintbrushes and made flower bouquets for the ice cream social, and they even found a salamander and a snake.

Seth Boyden’s Garden and Outdoor Learning Committee are parents who have helped create and maintain the backyard of the school and we would love your help and input. You can get active in one or more of these ways:

• Attend our planning meeting on Monday, Sept. 11, at 7:30pm in the Seth Boyden cafeteria. Join our meeting to be part of the team that shapes the outdoor learning environment!
• Join our mailing list to either be a part of the upcoming planning and projects for this year or just to stay in the loop about what is happening.
• Attend a daytime garden recess on Fridays to spend time with your child and help run garden activities. Sign up on the link above for more information.
• Lend a hand at a Weekend Workday to weed, build or tidy up the garden or outdoor learning areas. These dates will be announced soon.

Attention garden friends — we need your help this summer! We need two families per week to weed, and one family to fill the tree bags with water.

Please sign up for a slot or two!

We need all hands on deck so that we can hit the ground running in September. We will have a lot to harvest and experience in the garden when we return to school in September. We also plan to rebuild the garden beds at the end of the 2017 growing season.

We have met with Landscape Architect Bill Scerbo many times and have a beautiful plan for the garden. Our old beds are rotting, and we will replace them with cedar or another wood that will last for many years. We are also changing the shape of the garden beds to be more child-friendly, and we plan to have enough space around the beds so that the district lawnmowers can easily maintain the area.

The best part is that we already have funding for this project! There is a lot to be excited about!

Thank you in advance for your willingness to pitch in. See you in the garden this summer!

This week the PTA dedicated the new Teachers’ Station in our Outdoor Learning Center to Seth Boyden’s faculty, who play such an important role in the lives of our children and our school.

The Teachers’ Station features sculptural chairs and a table by John Kaufman, a Maplewood artist known for making sculptural collages.

Just like his artwork, which combines differing materials into fascinating wholes, our teachers join our diverse group of students into cohesive units of learning and friendship.

The PTA is very excited about this latest addition to our wonderful outdoor space!

Thanks to all who came out to work in the habitat garden on Saturday. We have new stone dust pathways, and the old garden fence has been completely removed.

But we’re not done yet! We’ll start installing the new fence, which will also serve as a trellis for a variety of grapes, on Sunday, 4/9, from 2-5pm, and also on 4/22 and 4/23. We need volunteers for these work days too, so mark your calendar and come out to pitch in!

Some images from our April 1 work day are below.