School Garden Coordinator
As the volunteer Garden Coordinator at Highland Park Elementary School, I started a gardening program from the ground up. I worked with the Sustainable Food Center and National Wildlife Federation to secure the funding, resources, and training necessary to run a successful learning garden. Not only did I lead a team of volunteers to build a garden from scratch, I wrote curriculum for gardening lessons and personally taught hundreds of students in grades K-5.
I used my marketing and writing background to create a website and blog to spread the word to the community about our fabulous new outdoor learning space. In 2018 I won a Monarch Heroes grant from the National Wildlife Federation to install a new butterfly garden and led a team of teachers and volunteers in the installation of this new garden.
In spring of 2019, I collaborated with the Boy Scouts of America to design an Eagle Scout project to expand the butterfly garden. Where there were once weeds, there are now flowers and pollinators, a little free library stocked with books, and picnic tables for kids to stop and enjoy the outdoors and watch the butterflies play. It’s a beautiful thing!
Since we first kicked off the gardening program in 2014, I’ve expanded the program to include education in the monarch migration, sustainable food, biodiversity, energy conservation, waste and consumption, water conservation, climate change and schoolyard habitats.