During the summer of 2024, students spent the summer beautifying and 'pollinating' our garden. Our main focuses for this summer was weeding/upkeeping, learning, and creating. HUGE thank you to Mr. Sandy (in our maintenance dept.) who installed a complex sprinkler system to allow our plants to thrive in these summer months and our garden is growing!!

Planting/Weeding: Each student got their hands dirty this summer! We did a lot of weeding, learning how to get to the root of the weed so that we could effectively pull them out. We were careful to decipher between  the weeds and the plants, which was difficult at times. We put new, fresh soil in the garden beds and planted about 15 new parsley plants for the Swallowtail butterflies. (Parsley is one of the plants they lay their eggs on.) We also planted some other plants that will provide nectar to our butterflies and bees in Wings and Wonder Butterfly Garden, such as Coneflowers, Zinnias, and Rue. 

Learning: Wings and Wonder Butterfly Garden is a wonderful opportunity for students to learn about the Monarch Butterfly in their natural habitat. How lucky are we that we have our own outdoor classroom?! We learned how to look for different kinds of eggs (ladybugs, Monarchs, Swallowtails, etc.). They are all now Milkweed experts and can spot the plant from a mile away. We collected Monarch caterpillars to hand-raise and safely release, we watched ladybugs munch on all of the little aphids, we saw a leaf bug and how well they were able to camouflage, and we saw a Swallowtail butterfly lay eggs on the parsley plants we planted. 

Creating: This summer we focused on one main art projects. We completed a nature mosaic project, where we took paint swatches and created pictures using the cut up paint swatch pieces. Last year's group made ladybugs out of riverrocks and hid them all over the garden. We had fun this summer venturing around the garden looking for them all!