New garden at middle school is teaching tool
When the new school year starts, students at the Butler Middle School will be greeted with a new butterfly garden in the school's courtyard, thanks to the hard work of fifth-grade teacher Sara Isacco.
Isacco is working toward her master's degree in education and environmental science at Slippery Rock University, and the butterfly garden is one of her final projects, she said.
The courtyard at the middle school will be turned into a plant pollinators' garden, helping to shelter hummingbirds and butterflies, Isacco said.
“One in three bites of food you take are because of pollinators,” she said, adding pollinators have been experiencing declining populations, just like the global bee decline.
Included in the garden will be butterfly houses, which are specially designed to allow butterflies through narrow slats but prevent birds and other predators from getting in, Isacco said.
The project had more than 40 volunteers — students and teachers — working to plant flowers known to attract butterflies and hummingbirds: cone flowers, asters, butterfly bush, milkweed, spirea and trumpet vine.
Pollinators can take pollen from the plants at the middle school and disperse it elsewhere.
“It looks really pretty, but it also serves an ecological purpose,” she said.
The garden also serves an educational purpose, according to Principal Josh Hundertmark.
Hundertmark said second-grade students in the district learn about the life cycle of the butterfly and raise their butterflies. In the future, the students from Emily Brittain Elementary School will take a walking field trip to the new garden to release the butterflies, he said.
Amy Dobkin, XTO Energy's community relations manager, said the project will provide a space for students to learn about other environmental science topics such as composting and garden maintenance.
Dobkin brought nine other XTO volunteers with her on Friday morning to help plant flowers and paint the existing pergola. XTO Energy also donated $500 for the project along with other donors Brenckle's Farms & Greenhouses, Home Depot, the Green Valley Nursery and Walmart, to raise about $2,000 total.
“Any time we can partner with the school, help the kids out, we love to do it,” Dobkin said. “We love to get involved in projects like this. This project is a catalyst for learning.”
Isacco said the creation of the pollinator garden also will create a new school club: the Green Club. She hopes to get students who have an interest in the environment to participate in fall and spring cleanups after school and work on other green initiatives such as recycling, she said.
Isacco said she hopes to get the garden certified through the Monarch Watch, a nonprofit conservation program based at the University of Kansas.
She also hopes to have the garden “Bee Counted” for the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge, a national call-to-action to support declining pollinator populations through the National Pollinator Garden Network.
