Emma10
Registered: December 2011
City/Town/Province: East Stroudsburg
Posts: 1
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As my junior year was coming to an end, I thought it was time to make a difference in my community. I had just finished a service-learning project with my English class through which we raised awareness about local homelessness—the causes and possible solutions—but now I wanted to lead a project by myself. Also a lifelong Girl Scout, I wished to achieve the highest honor, the Gold Award, which has a mission similar to that of the Apprentice Ecologist Project: to complete a project that will have long-lasting effects on the community. Because I live in the Poconos, a tourist area in eastern Pennsylvania known for natural beauty, conservation of the environment went straight to the top of my lists of problems we face. And there was such an issue close to home: my old elementary school.
Smithfield Elementary School is located along the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, where nature has not been widely affected by human interaction; the area around it is wooded and filled with birds, deer, and other animals. Because of its location near the river, the soil is fertile and supports a variety of plant life. I chose to conserve Smithfield’s Environmental Garden because of the opportunity it brings to the lives of students at the school. As a Smithfield alumnus, I remember how our education incorporated the garden into the teachings of ecology. As classes, we could simply walk outside and be taught the interactions between plants, be shown how composting works, and experience the natural cycles of plants. Since then, East Stroudsburg Area School District has had an increase in new students, many of them young. As a result, the school stretched to its limit in order to provide an education to all the newcomers. Through many renovations and construction projects, the school expanded to a more appropriate size. Smithfield Elementary lost much of its landscaping to reconstruction, including its unique Environmental Garden.
The Environmental Garden was an integral part of my elementary school experience. During my fourth and fifth grade years, I was part of the Environmental Club. We met twice a week to collect all the paper recycling throughout the school and talk about the plants and habitats around us. When the weather was nice, we went outside and tended to the garden: weeding, planting, and learning all the while. Since the completion of construction, there has been little effort to bring back the greenery. I aspired to restore the garden and give the students and staff at Smithfield back something that was once their own, while helping the environment. With the donations from local companies, the help from students and faculty, and the support from the community at large, I restored the Garden. The new garden did not only reach out to the students of the Smithfield Elementary Environmental Club, but to the students with multiple disabilities. A section of the garden became a "sensory" garden, filled with lamb’s ear and peppermint, for example, which provided the children with multiple disabilities a way to see the world through colors, textures, smells, and sounds. Another section became a butterfly garden. As kindergarden students, we hatched butterflies using the wild milkweed that was so readily available to us, so I hoped to continue this experience for future classes by providing the proper butterfly habitat. I upgraded the garden a bit because they gave me a section of the lawn all to myself, adjacent to the previous garden. I built in a gravel pathway, wide enough to be wheelchair-accessible, that runs the length of the area: 75 feet. I also built in mounds to give the garden some visual depth. Tall grasses, ground cover, bulbs, and new trees all contributed to the garden’s return to full force. With the future in mind, I left space for the upcoming Environmental Club and the school to add plants and make the garden their own. The garden turned out to be more than a school project, but an important addition to the community as well.
The community and environment benefited from my project. Starting locally, my garden has inspired Smithfield Elementary to take on another gardening project. Smithfield decided to cut a butterfly-shaped garden into a side of the hill next to the school as a memorial garden. In it, students can plant plants in memory of lost loved ones, which helps in the coping process. To start, the two advisors donated two trees in memory of each’s lost son. Another plant was donated in memory of a Smithfield alumnus who was murdered during her middle school years. The global link to my garden is through the peace pole stationed in the center of this butterfly garden. This pole was placed in the lawn in front of Smithfield during my elementary years after 9/11 occurred. Students planted bulbs and other hardy plants in hopes that the plants would survive as long as peace survives. On this pole is written a peaceful message in the languages of the world: Arabic, English, Chinese, and others. The pole was moved during construction, but is now the center of the butterfly-shaped garden, a garden inspired by my garden project. The environment also was affected positively. With new growth and long-term plants now occupying the space, new habitats were formed. What was once just grassy area now became grounds for butterfly hatching. With the new root systems introduced, erosion should be minimized. I can only wait to see the long-lasting effects that my garden has on the total environment.
As I grew out of elementary school and into middle and high school, I still remember how much of an impact that garden had on me and my fellow classmates. Personally, the Garden and Environmental Club has led me to strive for environmental conservation and a future interest in Earth Science and Environmental Engineering. I have always enjoyed learning about the Earth and its cycles, and now with this project under my belt, I have the confidence and experience to take on other projects like the Environmental Garden. Partnered with my love of service and want to help the community, a degree in the Earth Science area would provide knowledge and passion to make a difference globally. I want to learn how the environment can be used as a tool to improve the lives of those less fortunate, such as the many peoples affected by drought and famine, unclean water, and leeched soil. In the long-term, I want to save the world.
And so my junior year ended and I began my last year of high school with a vitality for service to the environment and to people. It is only natural that I follow this passion into college, where I hope to contribute to the campus and world. My wish is that my project opens the eyes of our youth to what a difference they can make, no matter how small or how large. Service to the environment will last a lifetime.
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