The trees are coming!

BHSEC is soon to become the proud recipient of 30 trees from the MillionTreesNYC initiative that is a part of the New York Restoration Project (http://www.nyrp.org ). Here are some photos that they gave us of similar installations they have done in other schools.







Since there are long-term plans to expand the existing BHSEC building, the trees will be located where the old children's playground is today.





All that equipment is going to be removed (that may have already started actually) and then the trees will be planted in their place. Once that is done we hope to apply for a grant to construct an irrigation system to do away with the manual watering. Then the existing container garden will be relocated amongst the trees and in the immediate space in front of it.







Susan Welti has been kind enough to offer to put together a design for the new garden pro bono. So we're all really excited to see what it is going to look like! Stay tuned for more updates after this Wednesday where Susan will be presenting her proposals to Ray Peterson and the BHSEC Garden Committee.

Lunch

Unfortunately I dropped my camera into a mug of hot coffee, so the pictures I took this week are stuck inside my memory card for now. Therefore I'll just report that I arrived during the students' lunch hour and there were 20+ students out in the yard. Some were in the basketball area, but most of them were chatting, eating, and studying in various parts of the garden. One group had notebooks out and seemed to be working together in the shady section of the garden. They had pulled the benches that face each other closer together. The traffic was noisy so I assumed that this was so they could hear each other better. (It will be good to be aware of this when the placement of benches is planned in the future).

Another thing I noticed, after the students left and I had finished watering, was that squirrels were enjoying lunch too--munching unfinished lunches inside of the trash barrel and also food that was forgotten on the benches and tables.


I'll end this post with two pictures I took earlier in September of a sculptures decorating the fence of another garden in the neighborhood--on 9th and B. One reminded me of the red zinnias that are still blooming in the Bard Garden.

Late Summer Blooms

Don't forget to wear your gardening gloves. (This stinging nettle has attacked me twice!)