SHORECLIFFS MIDDLE

West View Learning Garden Conserves Water This year in the West View Learning Garden we are focused on saving water and conservation. We are learning how to garden with California Native plants, bringing the beauty of California into our own schoolyard landscape. We put in a new succulent garden along the fence. We learned about cloning plants. Our boxes are thriving with fresh veggies that will be harvested soon. We harvested our fist bunch of carrots last week!

 

This year we received a grant from the city of San Clemente to make our garden more sustainable and water efficient. We are improving our irrigation system and learning that water saving techniques can not only save money, but can reduce maintenance, reduce pesticides, invite wildlife, and support the local ecology.

 

In class students have learned how to save water at home and we are working on a new landscaping / irrigation idea called, zero-scaping. We have learned about people in San Clemente who are removing their water hungry lawns and using California Native plants instead. Our four new rain barrels are full of free water that we have collected in the last rains. We are hoping to put an even larger collection barrel in next year.

 

We are learning how to make the garden a more sustainable way by learning about composting and worm compost tea. We experienced how important it is to add biology to the soil and watched fungi and rhizomes under microscopes improve our soil. We added new fungi amendments to our own soil and learned that a certain fungi is the biggest living organism in the world. We experimented with adding bio-teas and charted the growth before and after on tomato plants.

 

In class we have high school mentors from Sage Hills High come to teach us about sustainable agriculture and gardening. We have planted poppies and learned about food miles and how food gets to our tables. Recently the mentors brought in a live chicken and we learned how chickens help a garden with organic pest control and contribute to the soil biology.