Last Saturday we held a workday to build one of the winning school garden designs from our project Design a School Garden with LAUSD (and We’ll Build It). With cooperation from LAUSD’s Sustainable Schoolyards group, we were able to build two Four Square Gardens, designed by Jill Desimini, at the 28th Street Elementary School in downtown Los Angeles. More than 100 volunteers, parents, and students spent LAUSD’s first annual Martin Luther King day of service hammering together raised beds, painting storage bins bright orange and yellow, refreshing and replanting planters, and picking up every piece of trash on the school’s property. Now the school is bright and clean, and the garden is ready to be planted by the students.
Thanks to Starbucks for donating coffee, Homegirl Cafe for breakfast, Mayor Villaraigosa’s office for morning snacks and lunch (including a delicious bison sandwich by Large Marge Sustainables), DCM for water, and Home Depot for plants and soil. And we never could have made it through the day if it wasn’t for our DJs, Bennett Schimd, Sara T. from Indie 103, and Nicole Cifani. And finally, a huge thanks to L.A. Conservation Corps, Tracy Bartley, Teresa Dahl, Astrid Diehl from Mia Lehrer + Associates, and Mud Baron, who helped make this workday, and this garden, a reality. Check out the photos above and stay tuned for the next garden workday—we have four more designs to build!
