School turns courtyard into garden classroom

A grass courtyard at Washington Middle School has been transformed into a native plant garden and outdoor classroom with the help of parents, students, teachers and volunteers.

The demonstration garden features plants that need little water but provide a sanctuary for the birds, the bees, the school population and the larger community using the nearby school ball fields.

The project is the brainchild of middle school parent Maria M. Ruth, a writer with more than a dozen children’s books on nature topics to her credit and, more recently, a 2005 book titled “Rare Bird,” in which she chronicles the natural history and environmental struggles of the marbled murrelet, a robin-size seabird whose population decline mirrors the loss of its nesting habitat — the coastal, old-growth forests of the Northwest.

After five years of field trips, research and writing — and a family move from Southern California to Olympia in late 2006 — Ruth was ready for a break from the computer and a chance to get her hands dirty on a community-service project.

With the help of two other parents of middle school students — Deb Jacqua and Linda Andrews — Ruth designed the garden, organized work parties and cobbled together mostly donated materials to build the 6,000-square-foot garden.

“I’ve never met a parent volunteer with so much energy,” Washington Middle School teacher Samantha Chandler said of Ruth.

Students in Chandler’s leadership class have adopted the garden project, helping pick and plant the trees, shrubs, ferns and ground cover sprouting to life in the once-barren courtyard.

“I was amazed how much people were willing to donate,” Ruth said. “And the kids are really invested in the project.”

Last week, the 16 seventh- and eighth-grade students in the leadership elective spent their class time planting ferns, sedum and lichnus in the garden.

Lichnus is another perennial plant with felt-like leaves and showy flowers. Sedum is a ground cover with fleshy leaves and late-blooming flower heads that look a bit like broccoli.

“It’s the prettiest sedum I’ve ever seen,” leadership class student Emma Hughes, 14, said in jest as she dug in the dirt to plant her new favorite plant.

The plants rooted in the garden were donated by the Native Plant Salvage Project, the city of Olympia’s Urban Forestry Program and Andrews’ landscape-design business.

The garden space includes 33 cubic yards of compost soil from Silver Springs Organics, a Rainier-area commercial composting plant, three truck loads of wood mulch donated by Luken’s Tree Service and a gravel pathway that winds through the garden, dividing the sunny side from the shady side.

“I think it’s pretty cool,” said Stone Comstock, 13. “I think I’ll come back over the years and see how it’s grown.”

While the garden is nearly complete, Ruth has more outdoor education ideas to turn into reality.

She wants to create a watershed walk that would allow students to follow stormwater runoff generated at the school as it leaves the campus, enters a series of nearby post-Ice Age glacial kettles, feeds the headwaters of Moxlie Creek in the city’s Watershed Park and eventually flows into lower Budd Inlet at the bottom of East Bay Drive.

“Let’s connect the dots and watch where the water goes,” Ruth said.