Disney Planet Challenge Garden Pull-Out Day

In order to “prepare the soil” for the new Native Plant Garden, ECS will be hosting a garden pull-out day Saturday, April 9.  All ECS families and community members are invited to attend and help with the removal of existing foliage, mulching, and weeding to prepare for new, native plants.  The event will take place from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Please bring any tools you would be willing to share for the morning.   Thank you in advance for your help!

****Also, mark your calendar for the follow-up planting day Saturday, May 7.  

 We will be removing these shrubs.

 We are tagging certain native trees that already exist in the garden.

Experimenting with Native Plants

Last week we planted our native seeds.  Each student got to use one of our donated trays and select seeds to plant.  We labeled the trays and sorted them based on the amount of sunlight they required for healthy growth.  Check in to see our growth!!!

Seeds for the Growlab

We just got our Growlab! Emma's Grandma, Joanne Cosgrove, donated many different kinds of native plant seeds to our classroom.  We are excited to plant the seeds. From painted daisies to strawberry popcorn, all of the plants will be fun to observe!  We are very excited to plant next week!

Carter and Chris holding some of the seeds.

                                            Ajani and Tony holding more of the seeds.

Fashion with a Function

Help our project by buying one of our awareness raising t-shirts!!!  E-mail becky.craig@imagineschools.com or melanie.cowherd@imagineschools.com for more information.

Asher and Grace's Top 10 Reasons a Native Garden is Good for ECS

10. Fun in all seasons!
9. It will be a nice space to enjoy and relax
8. The community can learn about "planting native" in a fun way
7. It may seem like hard work, but it's fun to garden
6. ECS students can enjoy our garden
5. The garden will be fun for all ages
4. It is a great idea for the Disney Planet Challenge
3. ECS students can learn about native plants
2. The seeds from our garden will spread to Frick Park and more native plants will grow
1. We love gardens and being outside!

by Asher and Grace

Step 2: Refining our Idea

When we decided to do our project on invasive and native plants we watched a video clip about invasive plants.  It gave suggestions on what we could do to help prevent the spread of invasive plants.  At first we wanted to pull out all the invasive plants in Frick Park, but somebody pointed out how that idea would be too much work and not sustainable.  We couldn't go out and pull everyday.  We thought some more and decided we could have a native garden to teach about the importance of native plants. 

by Alex & Olivia S.

You can watch this video to see what we learned.



Plants Out of Place

video from: http://www.invasive.org/

Step 1: Choosing our Idea

First Mrs. Cowherd told us we were participating in the Disney Planet Challenge competition.  We were flaberguasted and excited to get started.  But she said, "Wait!  We have to read a story and choose a project."   We all agreed.  She read us Heros of the Environment by Harriet Rohmer to inspire us to see how kids can help the environment. 

by Omari

Some of our class went to ask the teachers and students for things that they thought needed to change in the environment and community. They thought of a lot of ideas. we made a list of ideas and voted on the top three. Then we did some reaserch on the top three and thought about what would make a good and sustaiable project. The winner was native and invasive plants.

by Emma H

                                     

Working with Partners

We have worked with the Penn State Master Gardeners on several projects.  The first project was about seed dispersal.  We looked at how different seeds move.  We noticed some seeds roll, some float, some wash away in the rain.  They grow wherever they end up.  We hope that our native plants' seeds spread and grow in Frick Park.

In another project led by the Penn State Master Gardeners, our class planted bulbs in different materials (legos, marbles, gravel, and crystals) to see if they would change how they grew.  All the plants started small and grew at least a foot.  We were surprised to find that the plants grew well in all the materials. 

by Lucy

We also worked with the Urban Eco Stewards.  They visited our class in the fall.  We went into Frick Park and cut down Japanese Knot Weed.  Japanese Knot Weed is a tall, invasive plant.  We learned how to identify it and that you have to dig out its roots otherwise it will just grow back. 

by Caelen

Disney Planet Challenge Project

Welcome to our blog!  We are so excited to be participating in the Disney Planet Challenge.  We worked hard on our project and will tell you about it in this blog. 
We are right on the edge of Frick Park a 561 acre green space.  We spend a lot of time in the park and regularly observe plants and animals on our hikes.  In Environmental Education this year, we have been working with a group called the Urban Eco Stewards.  Through their lessons, we have identified the problems invasive plants are causing to the natural habitats in our watershed.  We want to change this!

As a class, we researched many options of how to work against this problem.  Pulling all the invasive plants out of the park was not a sustainable solution for us.  We decided instead to raise awareness about the subject in our community.  We plan to do this by planting a native plant garden at our school and providing learning tools about invasive and native plants to our community.  This blog is our first step to making this possible.  Please read the subsequent posts to learn what we've learned.  Also, please feel free to share information and/or make comments.  Hopefully as a community, we can help prevent the spread of invasive species and protect our local watershed.

For more information on Frick Park please visit:
http://www.pittsburghparks.org/frick

For more information on Imagine Environmental Charter School please visit:
http://www.environmentalcharterschool.org/

For more information on the Disney Planet Challenge please visit:
http://disney.go.com/planetchallenge/