OUR PROJECTS
Schoolyard Learning Gardens
The Pasadena Native Plant Project recognizes the urgent need for redesigning the campuses of our schools to adapt to the increasing effects of climate change in our communities. Asphalt-laden campuses, depleted of shade and healthy air, are harsh places for our children to try to learn. Today, rising temperatures and water shortages are forcing us to rethink our infrastructure and how we live our lives. A host of new models are available to regenerate healthy landscapes, ecosystems and environments for our students to learn, grow and play in. Parents leading the conversation in their communities are seeking guidance and expertise to implement these changes, and The Pasadena Native Plant Project has been honored to partner with local schools and PTAs on a number of projects in which we work with the students, parents, teachers and administrators to design, grow and maintain educational native plant gardens.
Hamilton Elementary
“Grow a Rainbow Garden”
The PTA of Hamilton Elementary reached out to us looking for help and advice with potential garden projects at the school. After touring the campus with parents and administrators, we identified an appropriate location for a pilot project. Located on a busy intersection on Del Mar Blvd. in Pasadena, an unsightly chain link fence separates the school’s playground from the street. An area had been left uncovered by asphalt just inside the school. The parents and principal lamented the lack of privacy and greenery.
We provided a design for a pollinator garden that included a large hugel and swale, large evergreen shrubs along the fenceline will quickly grow in and provide privacy. Even faster will be the Catalina Island Morning Glory that has already begun to weave itself through the chain link. Flowering perennials like our native Buckwheats, Sunflowers, Sages and the endlessly blooming Bladderpod form a colorful bouquet that provide beauty and pollinator appeal throughout the school year and beyond.
We began installation over the weekend, when students, parents, teachers and administrators were free to participate in the work. We introduced them to the concept of hugelkultur and the benefits of capturing and storing rainwater in this way. Then we got busy digging. The soil was severely compacted, and nearly impossible to dig into. A couple of the dads who were landscapers and building contractors ran to Home Depot and rented demolition hammers and all of a sudden the work was getting done much quicker! Once the trenches were dug, we filled them with wood logs and mulch chips from a local arborist, soaked them with water, and buried them back in.
Don Benito Elementary Pollinator Garden
The 2nd Grade Teacher of Don Benito asked for our help creating a privacy screen between her classroom’s patio and the traffic on the street above it, so we jumped into action and donated some local Coastal Morning Glory, which establishes quickly even in the summer months, and despite being planted in June, was already crawling up the fenceline by the time students returned in August. We also designed a little miniature pollinator garden for this little planter that was previously sitting empty.
In October, the teachers and students with neighboring classrooms began to notice the bright green foliage quickly covering the chain link, and requested additional plants for their own areas. We have since provided 6 additional native Morning glory vines to provide additional privacy, greenery, flowers, as well as habitat for local pollinators!
