If you have a child who attends Los Altos schools, chances are you know something about native plants. That's because from kindergarden to 8th grade, the Living Classroom program offers lessons that take place in each school's native habitat garden. Children become familiar with the plants as they learn about the critters that pollinate them, how Native Americans used them, and how they fit into the ecosystem.
Nine schools now have native habitat gardens; the oldest one was installed 7 years ago at Oak School. Vicki Moore, who developed the Living Classroom program, said the gardens were deliberately planned as plant communities, with groups of plants that might occur together in the wild, so that students can learn what nature does and understand that these plants belong here. She chose individual plants for their beauty, their traditional uses, or their ecological niche. Interpretive signs identify the plants and give some information about them.
The goal of Living Classroom is to make nature part of the everyday experience at school, not [occasional field trips] you need to organize transportation to get to, Moore said. Hands-on, real life, real things. Seeing and hearing creeping, crawling, flying, and buzzing life in the garden captures the imagination of kids, and the lessons point out the interrelationships between plants and animals.
First graders get excited about the Who's My Habitat lesson, Moore said. Each student gets a placard with information about either a plant or an animal, with clues about what animal is important to that plant. The children find their partner, then they find the plant in the native habitat garden. They're also attuned to other animals who may be visiting the garden, such as butterflies or hummingbirds.
Third grade teacher Janis Tjader said her students love the Ohlone scavenger hunt. They get descriptions of how the Ohlone used the plants, such as for medicine, food, or making baskets, then search the interpretive signs in the garden to find the Ohlone usage and name the plant.
The Living Classroom program offers 4 to 12 lessons per year, depending on the grade, and more than 80 percent of teachers sign up for lessons. The program is in its fifth year in Los Altos, and this year began offering lessons to third graders in the Mountain View - Whisman district. Half the lessons focus on edibles, such as Seed to Pretzel, and half focus on the native habitat garden.
The school gardens are a special place, more so because they are accessible to all students. During recess, kids who are not drawn to competitive sports and are more attracted to quiet activities and unstructured, creative play come to the native habitat garden. Moore has found pretend villages made of tanbark, acorns, moss, and branches.
The native habitat gardens are not available only to students. The gardens have elicited a lot of community support. Eagle scouts have done most of the garden-building work, with materials donated by or discounted from local retailers, and parent volunteers who get the garden in shape before the school year starts. Thirty volunteer docents from the community help with the lessons. Parents attending soccer games have also wandered into the Oak School native habitat garden, sometimes noting plants they have to have, Moore said.
If you have a native garden at home, you can reinforce and expand on these kinds of lessons. Catherine Mohr, whose Mountain View yard was a construction site 3 years ago, has talked with her 9-year-old daughter about how spotted newts and other animals have reinhabited the garden as they planted natives.
On a family camping trip to Big Sur, they looked closely at plants in the coastal chaparral and redwood understory plant communities, which mirror the ones in their own garden: We have that plant! or Wouldn't it be great in our garden! Mohr has given her daughter a sense of ownership in the garden by inviting her to come along to the nursery and help choose plants for the garden.
The garden is designed for creative play. Near the edible garden, Mohr has pruned a large fig tree so several kids can sit in it and use it as a fort. Her daughter makes paths and hiding places in the wildflower meadow, which gets 4 feet high in the summer. The front yard, which is more open with a durable groundcover, is favored for swordplay.
The key, Mohr said, is to let things get damaged. The rule is that the kids can't pull up plants, but that she won't get mad if something gets broken. Fortuitously, she has discovered that natives often come back the next year even if they look dead or had been trampled to the ground.
Her daughter has grown a jarful of tadpoles into pacific tree frogs, so the family talks about how susceptible amphibians are to pesticides worldwide and why they garden organically. That also means anything in the edible garden is safe to eat – and none of the berries make it inside the house.
Use of resources permeates discussions in the household. The wildflower meadow is not watered in the summer, greywater from sinks and showers is routed to the fruit trees, and rainwater is cached. See photos of the garden at http://tinyurl.com/aahen5c.
A modern green wall of native plants at a Los Altos Hills residence offers a different interpretation of a family-friendly garden. In this case, using natives means lower maintenance and less water use. The two boys love the green wall and get fired up when they see hummingbirds, butterflies, and other critters, designer Geoffrey Coffey said. He chose plants with habitat value as well as soft textures and aromatic leaves.
On a north-facing vertical plant wall, the favorites included three plants with fragrant foliage. Yerba buena is a well-behaved creeping mint. Mugwort, with both a soft texture and an appealing fragrance, can be invasive in the ground, but in the plant wall, the other plants were competing well. Hummingbird sage boasts spikes of magenta flowers and a fruity aroma.
The north-facing green wall was an elegant solution to a very steep, eroding hillside that threatened the house's foundation. The lower green wall, 25 feet long and 4 feet high, borders an outdoor patio that connects to the kitchen door. A new path between the upper and lower green walls connects to the front of the house. Downhill from the patio is a valley oak with a rope swing, also popular with the boys. See photos of the green wall and its construction at http://tinyurl.com/ahy6bzs.
For more information:
Living Classroom: http://living-classroom.org/
The Living Classroom is a program of the Los Altos Community Foundation, a 5013 nonprofit.
The Los Altos School District program can be reached at 650-947-1103.
Going Native Garden Tour: http://www.goingnativegardentour.org/
Both the Mountain View and the Los Altos Hills gardens were on the 2013 GNGT on Sunday, April 21, 2013. Registration is free. Plants are labeled in most gardens.
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How to Engage Kids in the Garden
--TK
A hummingbird's-eye view of hummingbird sage flowers, a favorite plant at many native gardens for its fragrant leaves and jewel-toned visitors.
Students at the native habitat gardens are taught to rub the fragrant leaves of natives to release the pleasant aromas. Fragrant pitcher sage is one of their favorites with its fuzzy leaves and appealing scent.
Phacelias towered over the other plants in the wildflower meadow at this Mountain View garden last April. Children delight in creating paths through the meadow and love colorful seasonal wildflowers.
© 2013 Tanya Kucak