Students get hands dirty in native pollinator garden
Jocelyn Mendoza likes to stick her hands in the dirt, but for her, gardening is much more than that.
The fourth-grader spends a couple days a week after school working with the Curren School’s Earth Keepers in the two native pollinator gardens. They’ve been mulching one garden since last school year to prepare it for a planting day last week. The other garden was planted two years ago and they’ve been maintaining it ever since.
“What’s fun is planting the plants,” Jocelyn said. “I like the plants because they help us to have cleaner oxygen.”
Biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service worked with students throughout the day planting different native plants, to draw in pollinators such as bees and monarch butterflies. The biologists explained to the students the importance of native pollinators and native plants and how the students can have a positive impact on the environment. The recent planting day was the second phase of the school’s 8,000-squarefoot native pollinator garden.
The native garden’s first installation broke ground in December 2015 with the support of wildlife biologist Mike Glenn with the service’s office in Ventura and has since served as an outdoor classroom.
“The students design it all, they learn about all the native species, all the native plants, all the native pollinators then they design it all then they come out and plant it all,” Glenn said. “It’s sort of an entire holistic process. They come out here and they know what to do.”
Glenn’s aim is to instill a “sense of wonder” in children using native habitats on their own school grounds. Glenn has worked with about 20 schools across Ventura County to create native habitats which are grantfunded from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“I think the most important thing is to have them love nature and have them care for nature,” Glenn said. “If a student is having a bad day or isn’t doing well in the classroom he or she can go out to the garden for a bit and it can be a way for them to release some energy and care about nature.”
At Curren School, somewhere between 25 and 35 students in kindergarten through sixth grade work in the gardens under the supervision of Jennifer Siebers, a physical education teacher.
“We talk about everything from picking up trash and not littering to protecting the environment. We talk about that we have a pledge we say that is about protecting the earth and the importance of being good earth citizens,” Siebers said. “It makes such a big impact on them.
The Earth Keeper students even have a special pledge. Mendoza can recite it by heart — just like the Pledge of Allegiance.
“I pledge allegiance to the Earth, the flora, fauna and human life that it supports. One planet indivisible with safe air, water, soil, economic justice, people rights and peace for all,” Jocelyn said.
The garden the students were working in will be home to 45 native plant species when it’s finished.
Jocelyn, along with a handful of other Earth Keeper students, can walk anyone through the garden planted two years ago — with plants taller than them — and talk about each individual plant, what pollinators like it and if its edible.
They’ll even tell you which plants smell the best and gently pull off a leaf for garden guests to sniff.
They are proud of the work they have done in the garden, and it shows. They talk about difficulties that have fallen on the garden in the last year, like younger students going in and taking berries off the trees or grabbing caterpillars.
The Earth Keeper students said other, younger students have to go in the garden with teacher supervision now.
Isabella Caliari, a third-grader, said this year marks her first year in Earth Keepers, and so far she really likes the club. Caliari was showing other students how to dig to find the “good dirt” for the plants.
“I like gardening a lot, in my house. We have a garden full of vegetables,” Isabella said. “I like to get my hands dirty and I like to put my hands in the dirt, it feels fun.”