Our students and our garden!

Here are our awesome pollinator professionals working to build our community pollinator garden! The final product will be shown next week!

Out special needs students have been as busy as bees on our community pollinator garden! First, we began our school year researching local pollinators and the plants and other materials that support them. Next. our students scouted out land on our school grounds where we could build our garden and we researched how to build a garden- we had to dig up the grass, til the soil, and arrange our plants. Our students drew sketches of what each of them wanted our garden to have in it and look like- some drew water features or benches, others made the garden into a cool shape or added some other personal touch. We looked at all the drawings and took pieces from everyone's suggestions to create an awesome pollinator garden for our community. We have places to sit and relax or visit with friends, a funny sign with the face cut out so you can be a bumble or a butterfly, an area for our pollinators to get water and a place for them to rest or sleep, and a variety of plants that appeal to the bumblebees, butterflies, birds and bugs that all pollinate our plants! Our students are putting hte final touches on our educational sign that provides information about our plants and the importance of pollinators and simple tips for our visitors. Also, our students have created pollinator seed bombs for everyone who attends our unveiling of hte garden- each guest will get to take home a pollinator seed bomb to plant at their home, in their neighborhood, or somewhere else, to help provide more pollinator plants for our pollinators!

Out special needs students have been as busy as bees on our community pollinator garden! First, we began our school year researching local pollinators and the plants and other materials that support them. Next. our students scouted out land on our school grounds where we could build our garden and we researched how to build a garden- we had to dig up the grass, til the soil, and arrange our plants. Our students drew sketches of what each of them wanted our garden to have in it and look like- some drew water features or benches, others made the garden into a cool shape or added some other personal touch. We looked at all the drawings and took pieces from everyone's suggestions to create an awesome pollinator garden for our community. We have places to sit and relax or visit with friends, a funny sign with the face cut out so you can be a bumble or a butterfly, an area for our pollinators to get water and a place for them to rest or sleep, and a variety of plants that appeal to the bumblebees, butterflies, birds and bugs that all pollinate our plants! Our students are putting hte final touches on our educational sign that provides information about our plants and the importance of pollinators and simple tips for our visitors. Also, our students have created pollinator seed bombs for everyone who attends our unveiling of hte garden- each guest will get to take home a pollinator seed bomb to plant at their home, in their neighborhood, or somewhere else, to help provide more pollinator plants for our pollinators!

Starting to get some ideas of plants that will attract beauties like this...

We decided our group was going to carry out this project in 3 main sections- the research and purchasing, prepping the location, and finally planting of the pollinator plants. Our group members will be leading various parts of this project and our goal is to create a pollinator preserve on the grounds of our high school. Our group is going to create an area on the school grounds where native Illinois pollinators can exist and thrive. We also want to area to have a place for people and especially students and community members to come and learn about the importance of pollinators and to be able to observe them. The land we will be planting on is on the school grounds and we will be using some of our funding to add additional soil to the area and prep the grounds. A large portion of our funds will be used for pollinator habitats and watering areas as well as pollinator friendly plants. We also plan to use some of the funds to create an observation and education area which will help our community members, neighbors, and students learn about the importance of pollinators and how much we depend on them. We do not need to purchase gardening tools is these have already been donated we do not need to purchase gardening tools is these have already been donated to our school to our school to our school. The high school staff members will be working alongside our students to prep the grounds and create our pollinator habitat. Our school community will benefit greatly from having more pollinators in the area as well as having the opportunity to learn about pollinators and their importance in our world. Our school community and neighborhood community will also have the chance to learn more about gardening and making a pollinator friendly garden which will hopefully lead to them making pollinator gardens at their homes. We are looking forward to the learning piece of this project but especially the hands-on aspects of this project for our special education students to learn from. Our special-needs classroom will be performing much of the day toddler ay maintenance such as watering and weeding and will work hard to learn about pollinators and their importance so we can continue to share this knowledge with the larger community.