NEW
Garvey Nature Garden
Saturday april 23 | 10am - 5PM
Design & Care: Jesse Chang (Catalyst San Gabriel Valley)
Michael Naka (Garvey Intermediate School)
community, and partners
Garden Size: 10,416 sq. ft.
Started: 2016
I grew up with acres of woodland in New England where I could wander and wonder at nature all around me. Each school garden I create is a small way for our urban youth to reconnect to nature, to a sense of place and to our local ecology disrupted by concrete and exotics. I quote nature educator David Sobel on the primary reason for creating native habitat on school campuses: “What’s important is that children have an opportunity to bond with the natural world, to learn to love it and feel comfortable with it, before being asked to heal its wounds.”
Notable Plants
Peirson’s Morning-Glory (Calystegia peirsonii)
Douglas Iris (Iris douglasiana)
Santa Ana Pitchersage (Lepichinia cardiophylla)
Spring Madia (Madia elegans)
Flowering-Quillwort (Triglochin scilloides)
My favorite part of the garden is the vernal pool. The vernal pool is a very unique ecosystem that used to be all throughout California but now are very limited, due to agriculture and urbanization. They are temporary pools that fi ll up during fall and winter rains and can survive very extreme wet/dry cycles. I was able to seed it from another school’s garden with some native vernal pool species, both plants, as well as fairy shrimp. When the pool fi lls up, you see the kids get excited about seeing nature up close. And that, to me, is how we are helping students growing up in an urban environment connect with nature.”
—Jesse Chang
