We kicked off September with a field trip by David Douglas High School at Leach Botanical Garden’s Back 5 Project.
Leach staffers led a group of 29 high school students through an ice breaker activity and native plant and animal scavenger hunt for the first part of the day. After lunch, Leach, JCWC staffers and Christa Schier, a partner from the Bureau of Environmental Services, led students through different stations around the Back 5 area. One station was a macroinvertebrate exploration activity. The second station required students to use their senses to map where they noticed the locations, smells, textures and morphology of certain plants. The big picture goal is to implement a long term project where the students become increasingly familiar with a specific introduced plant in order to present on this plant at the end of the school year.
At the beginning of November, the DDHS cohort returned to the Back 5 for another day of exploration and learning. Natalie Ramsland, intern and Geospatial Outreach Coordinator at PCC Sylvania, led students through another mapping activity of the Back 5. This required students to use their observational skills to explore their surroundings and record how they felt in certain parts of the area, where they would consider spending a whole afternoon, what they smelled, landmarks they noticed and vernal pond observations.
In the afternoon, the students chose their plants of interest for their year-long project. They continued to familiarize themselves with their plants by recording what they noticed about the plant (color, growth pattern, location) and then removing them from various patches around the Back 5 area. It was a soggy and muddy afternoon but the students persisted and many said they looked forward to returning to the garden next month.