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At the beginning of 2012, Paw Paw assessed the school
grounds. The students found an area that was often wet
and accepting potentially polluted runoff from the
baseball field and a large portion of the school yard.
The students decided that they wanted to use the
knowledge they learned the last school year to install
another rain garden.
Since it was mostly high school level
students working on the rain garden, they were able to
take on much more of the planning and math of the
project. Using geometry and algebra, the students
calculated how many yards of mulch, sand, and dirt that
they would need. The students also learned skills in
public relations, practiced mock interviews and
contacted local media outlets. The PHLOW team created
posters, signs, ands flyers that they posted all around
the school, and their entire town of Paw Paw.
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The week before the rain garden planting, an adult
volunteer came out twice to backhoe the area. He
expanded the area beyond the original plan’s dimensions,
and in doing so increased the rain garden area to nearly
350 square feet. The larger rain garden would be able
to retain more water and require more native plants than
the previous design. |
The majority of the middle school and high school
students took part in different phases of the planting.
They cycled out in 45minute sessions. The first group
picked the existing rocks out of the rain garden area to
make a check dam. They further loosened up the soil and
added sand to the soil to make it more permeable. |
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An adult volunteer donated rich topsoil to be mixed in
with the sand at the rain garden area. He donated and
dumped 10 full lots of topsoil into the garden
throughout the day. |
A very helpful adult volunteer, Ruth, tilled and prepped
the area as Xavier and a couple other devoted high
school students staked and mulched trees from the
Spring 2012 CTree
planting. |
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The next several groups mixed sand and soil to fill the
area back in and shape the rain garden into a berm and
ponding area. |
01.
An even layer of mulch was added to the rain garden
area.
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01.
The rain garden was shaped, bermed, mulched ready to be
planted. |
Lead teacher Carol Coryea and CI's Ben Alexandro helped
direct the students where the plants should be planted
using the designs the kids had made. |
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Damian carefully set the plants out where they should be
planted. |
PHLOW Student leaders picked exactly what native plants
to use in their rain garden. They planted based on
height, water tolerance, shade tolerance, and color
scheme of the plants. |
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10.
Larger water loving plants were kept to the middle while
shorter drought resistant plants were relegated to the
exterior. The extra plants were added to the 2011 rain
garden to keep it lush and beautiful. |
10.
The students planted taller more water loving plants in
the center such as cardinal flowers, beebalm, and joe
pye weed. The edges were planted with shorter plants
that did not need as much moisture such as common blue
violets and black eyed susans. Plants that could
tolerate some shade such as sneeze weed and great blue
lobelia were planted on the north side of the garden.
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On the planting day the older PHLOW high school students
educated grade school students that came out to observe
the rain garden. |
The PHLOW students explained what they were doing and
why it was so important and taught the younger students
how to properly plant native plants. |
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Both the rain garden and the CTree project completed in
the spring of 2012 engaged not only the school across
several grades, but transformed students into leaders of
watershed protection and stewardship in their
communities. |
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This project was funded with grants from the Friends of
the Cacapon River, NOAA-BWET, the National Fish and
Wildlife Foundation,
WV's Chesapeake Bay Implementation
Grant, The MARPAT Foundation, and the
members of Cacapon Institute. |
