Willow Glen Resident
Education
Organic garden starts to take root at Willow Glen Elementary School
By Laura Rheinheimer
Look out the kindergarten portables at Willow Glen Elementary School, and it's clear a dramatic change is taking place. The grounds, which just weeks before were overgrown with weeds, are about to be tilled into an organic garden.
The makeover is happening with the help of Felecia and Bob Mulvany, the school's PTA and a $5,000 grant from Lowe's Toolbox for Education.
"My first thought was, 'How can we get some green space for the kids?' " Felecia Mulvany said.
Mulvany designed the garden to create an outdoor classroom, which teachers can use as a teaching tool and where students can get their hands dirty. It will be located behind the portables on the Lincoln Avenue side of the campus.
The design for the garden includes 10 raised planter beds and a reading garden behind the row of portables. Herbs, vegetables and flowers will be grown, along with fifth-grade teacher Donna Dean's famous 300-pound pumpkin she grows every fall.
Dean said in the past she has used gardening to supplement her lessons. When her students study Native American history, they grow corn, beans and squash, and they collect insects for science class.
"We're just going to try to incorporate as much science as possible," Mulvany said.
"The garden is natural for learning," said Dean in an email. Dean said she envisions a place where children can sit and read in the shade and have planting boxes for each class that wants to grow something.
Mulvany plans to maximize every inch of the 1,300 square feet in the garden. The reading garden, which will be in the space behind the row of portables, will have several benches and a solar-powered birdbath on the edge of a grassy section. Shrubbery will surround the garden. Birdhouses, custom-built by Bob Mulvany to attract certain types of birds such as chickadees and wrens, have already been installed in trees.
Felecia Mulvany would like to enhance the area with the installation of a camera on one of the birdhouses to give students a closer look at birds feeding. This project is on hold until further funding is available.
PTA President Alexandra Hoppe supports the garden project and plans to look for additional funding.
"I think there are endless possibilities as to where we could go with the garden," said Hoppe via email, "but it's going to take volunteers, not just teachers, to make it work. It can be something the whole community gets behind, and of course, we can always use more donations of time and money."
The PTA plans to seek more funding from organizations such as San Jose Beautiful and through fundraising events.
The Mulvanys, with the help of their sons Kevin, 9, and Dillon, 5, who attend the elementary school, did most of work on the garden. They pulled out weeds and Bermuda grass and trenched the neglected area behind the classrooms. The next step is to install irrigation and do the landscaping so students can start planting crops next spring.
"If we hadn't gotten the grant, it would have been a much more difficult task," Bob Mulvany said.
