41. Start a Garden at Polly T. McCabe Center HS

05/14/10 --- Still have this on the back burner. I drove past this school the other day and there is a fantastic spot for cutting flowers. Some day.

12/15/09 --- No progress on this one. I emailed the guy in charge, but in looking at the application, it might not be something I can do on my own. Back burner on this one.

08/24/09 --- There is a high school on Wooster Square for pregnant girls from the New Haven school system. It was founded in 1966 and has grades 7-12. The building is a square block of concrete with tall windows covered with slatted blinds. The building wasn't built in 1966, but's got a very 70's feeling to it. There is a passage way betweeen the two sides of the building that is just bare concrete. It seems very cold and clinical.

There are some hedges and trees out front, but no other plantings of any kind. There are also two bare patches out there, one that gets full sun and one that is a really nice shady area under some trees. When I see a blank slate like that, I really want to explore how to make it a beautiful garden. Combined with that, I feel like pregnant women should be around beautiful things. I though the shady area would make a great zen/meditation garden and the grassy/sunny area would make a great place to grow either flowers or some veggies.

This could be combined with some kind of curriculum or something, I'm guessing. I was working in the community garden this summer. A Yale Forestry School student was running the group through Urban Resources Initiative (http://www.yale.edu/uri/). You get someone to steward some public land, like the principal or a teacher at a school or a resident, and they will partner with you. They provide free plants and someone to help plan and implement the garden space. So I just need to talk to the principal at the school and see if she or someone else will invest the time needed to commit to stewarding the project. Would be nice to get some pretty curtains up in those windows too!