When parents and teachers at Granby Elementary in Columbus, OH, formed a garden team in 2017 to develop goals for their school garden, one of their guiding principles was to help make the school more environmentally friendly. “We wanted sustainability to be a theme throughout the space, both for its environmental implications and to serve as a teaching tool for our students and our community,” shares Amber Keller, former Granby parent, Franklin County Ohio Master Gardener, and co-leader for the garden project. “So, in our initial garden design, we included native plants to provide habitat, to conserve water, and to teach about pollination, adaptations, and plant life cycles; rain barrels to teach about using rainwater to water plants; permeable pathways to allow water to percolate into the ground rather than running off; and a composting bin to teach about decomposition and nutrient cycling.”
The garden design called for converting three large turf areas of the garden to native plantings. Two of those turf areas would become wildflower meadows that wouldn't require mowing except once a year, and the third area would become a landscaped butterfly habitat with paths throughout. To determine the best way to remove the turf, in 2018, the garden team reached out to the Franklin County Soil and Water Conservation District and the Franklin County Ohio Master Gardeners. “The advice at the time was to smother the grass using sheet composting and lasagna gardening,” says Keller. These methods involve laying down cardboard to cover the entire space, then layering browns and greens on top of the cardboard. Smothering the grass prevents photosynthesis from happening, thereby killing the grass but leaving the grass biomass on the soil. The layered browns and greens on top provide a rich base for growing.
“It was important to us to incorporate students in garden learning and hands-on work as much as possible,” says Keller. “So, we partnered with our school librarian, Anastasia Mayberry, in September of 2019 for the smothering project. Mrs. Mayberry had her 4th-grade classes research composting, then they came out to the garden and applied their learning in this sheet composting project. They laid down the cardboard and layered greens and browns, including coffee grounds, dried leaves, grass clippings, straw, and topped it off with a layer of compost.”
By early spring of 2020, it was clear that the cardboard was decomposing well. However, with the arrival of spring rains, the garden encountered a drainage issue in the future butterfly habitat. When the turf grass was present, the garden team wasn't able to see how water traveled through the space, but smothering the grass revealed the water drainage pathway, and it created a channel right through the future pollinator haven. “We were at a crossroads with what to do about this new problem,” says Keller. “We had already killed all the grass, and we didn't want to go back to having turf in this area, but we weren't sure what was possible. We again reached out to the Franklin Soil and Water Conservation District, and a conservation agent visited our space. We explained our goals for a butterfly habitat and our overall sustainability goals. The agent proposed that we create a rain garden, and she sketched up plans and instructions on how to do it.”
Building a rain garden would provide another habitat component and help prevent flooding by retaining rainwater on-site, rather than allowing it to flow down a storm drain to the river. “We were excited about this plan! No longer were we just dealing with an unexpected water drainage problem; now we were getting the chance to create a more diverse habitat and add to our sustainability initiative,” says Keller.
To move forward with building the rain garden, the garden team reached out to their networks. What resulted was an incredible example of community support, and how involving experts in the garden design process can be hugely beneficial and not necessarily a huge expense. “One of the moms on our garden team had a brother in the landscaping and irrigation business, so he brought equipment to create the terraced depressions for the rain garden,” Keller explains. “Together with a Franklin County Master Gardener Volunteer and a butterfly expert from the Worthington Hills Garden Club, we got to work reinforcing the sides of the rain garden with rocks from our past home projects. A local resident was disassembling her backyard pond and gave us all the rocks from her pond, which we used to create a dry creek bed. A number of the plants were donated by Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed (FLOW) and Green Columbus, and many more were purchased using funds from a Love, Play, Smile grant received from Finley's Smile, an organization founded in honor of Finley Grace Hollinger, the late daughter of one of Granby's teachers.”
“Many of these organizations also helped us make the plant list for the rain garden and butterfly habitat,” shares Keller. The team planted an assortment of native, water-tolerant, pollinator plants, including Swamp Milkweed, Blue Flag Iris, Marsh Blazing Star, Great Blue Lobelia, Boneset, Aromatic Aster, and Switchgrass. The plants were pleased in their new habitat and began to flourish.
Since taking root, the Granby School Garden has provided students numerous learning opportunities, including a program called Insect Detectives, searching the butterfly habitat for insects, tallying their observations, and creating graphs of their data. Students have also been working with a Master Naturalist to learn about the importance of native plants and have been winter sowing native plants to enhance the garden habitat.
The Granby School Garden also features a program, planned and managed by adult volunteers, called Garden Recess, where students are invited to visit the garden informally and participate in garden-based activities during their scheduled recesses. For example, in the fall, Garden Recess students search for monarch caterpillars and chrysalises in the butterfly habitat, create butterfly crafts, learn about apples, and sample apple sauce. The garden also features raised beds for growing vegetables, which are heavily utilized during garden recess visits. “Our garden is directly adjacent to the playground, so during Garden Recess, students can visit the garden to harvest, water, weed, use their imaginations in the fairy garden, dig in the digging bed, go on scavenger hunts, explore, and more,” says Keller.” This winter, Garden Recess parents and students, along with volunteers from FLOW and Sawmill Wetlands, raised hundreds of native plant seedlings for transplanting into the garden and sharing with school families to transplant in their yards and neighborhoods.
Keller and her family moved to Massachusetts in 2022, bringing their zeal for gardening with them. Under the care of garden team co-chairs Heidi Schaeffer and Karyn Nicoll, the Granby School Garden is flourishing! The school is now working to secure grant funding for new projects that would connect classroom curriculums with the garden to increase the garden’s reach to even more students. The Granby School Garden Facebook Page ends every post with a signature hashtag that really sums up this awesome program: #itsworthit.
