Teaching lessons with landscapes

Thanks to the generosity of New Jersey landscaping professionals, students at Eisenhower Middle School in Wyckoff don’t need to leave school grounds to take an environmental field trip.

In two outdoor courtyards at the suburban New Jersey school, students have seen firsthand how foods they eat, such as herbs, peppers and tomatoes, grow.

They’ve been able to study pollinators, to compare native and nonnative vegetation and to measure nitrogen levels in soil.

In short, they are able to enjoy a real-world application of their curricula on school grounds.

“It has become a learning center,” eighth-grade science teacher Loris Chen says of the courtyards, which used to be a concrete slab surrounded by weeds and a gravel space. “The finished projects were beyond anything we could have envisioned having done.”

More than 50 member companies of the New Jersey Landscape Contractors Association donated supplies and volunteered more than 1,600 hours to transform the school’s courtyards.

The NJLCA adopted the school as its community project for PLANET’s annual Day of Service, and the completed project was valued at $100,000.

NJLCA President Jody Shilan’s son attends Eisenhower Middle School, so Shilan knew how the school’s seventh and eighth grade students had adopted the enclosed courtyards as grade-level projects.

Seventh-graders wanted to turn their courtyard into an outdoor education space with a greenhouse and ecosystems to study, Chen says.

Eighth-graders measured temperatures in their courtyard to explore the urban heat island effect, or the way areas of blacktop or concrete become hotter than areas with greenery. Then they worked to devise ways to mitigate the issue.

NJLCA members incorporated the students’ ideas into their plans: They planted several trees and built a pergola – planted with wisteria – to create shade. In addition, they installed a pondless waterfall, which has circulating water that will cool the air around it.

Considering all of the funding limitations schools face, Chen doubts the courtyard project would have been completed by now if it weren’t for the NJLCA. She also doubts it would have been done so cohesively.

“Without the community involvement, we’d still be talking about, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice?’” she says. “(I’m still) amazed at the fact that this has happened and I’m not retiring.”
The project was a great success, allowing competing companies to work together for a good cause, Shilan says.

“I think we all have a responsibility to educate our children to the importance of taking care of the planet,” he says. “Everybody can talk about being green. Here’s a perfect example of people actually doing it.”

In landscaping the courtyards, existing materials, such as gravel, were reused, Shilan says. Sustainable plant material was used, as was drip irrigation, which uses water more efficiently.

Ultimately, parts of Eisenhower Middle School should cool off, requiring less air-conditioning and reducing the school’s carbon footprint, Shilan says.

This year’s PLANET Day of Service will take place April 22. Register a project at planetdayofservice.org.

Michelle Park