The West Vine Community Sensory Learning Space

After a long winter where our garden looked rather bare, spring has brought many welcome changes.  As you can see in this photo, Matt Peel has built our shed.  We are very grateful to him as well as to Patrick O’Dell for donating supplies and to the Daley Family for helping with the finish work on the shed.

The Town of Stonington has kindly dug the trench for the electrical and water lines we need for the water feature.  The electricity and water will be out there soon, thanks to electrician Joe Guliano and plumber Michael Terranova who are volunteering their time to get those services up and running.

The iris, grape hyacinths, and crocus bulbs that were planted last fall by the students have come up and brightened both the sensory garden and the garden beds in front of the school.  We appreciate all of the people who donated money last fall so that we could purchase these bulbs.

Many classes have already been outside to enjoy and learn in the garden.  Mrs. Bonang’s class has done some observations and writing about the crocus plants, which you can view by clicking here.

The next steps in the garden include putting in the raised beds which were purchased with a grant from the Stonington Education Fund, finishing the pavers, and planting trees and more plants.  Later this month, Home Depot of Westerly is generously donating trees, picnic tables, and bird supplies as well as much needed volunteer time to finish installing the pavers and plant trees.  We are very excited about the progress in the garden and the fact that classes are now able to get outside to use it.

The past two weeks have been a busy time in our garden.  Most of the pavers have been installed, providing a stable surface for everyone to walk on.  Thanks again to Mike Christie Landscaping, who donated the time to install the pavers.  The butterfly garden has been planted, thanks to help and a discount on the plants from Stonington Gardens.  Most of the classes were able to go out and help with the butterfly garden, and by the time the last class left there were already bees and dragonflies on the plants.  The first chrysalis was found on a basil plant too!  The water feature was running for the day and the children enjoyed watching it.

Thank you, too, to everyone who participated in our bulb fundraiser.  We raised about $800 to use towards our shed, which will hopefully be started next week with volunteer labor by Matt Peel.  Many people also generously donated money for us to buy bulbs for the children to plant later this fall, and we were given enough to purchase 1000 bulbs!  The classes will be planting crocus, iris, and grape hyacinth bulbs both in our sensory garden and in the garden beds in front of the school.  We’re looking forward to doing that and seeing them come up in the spring!  Thank you again!

If you’ll be visiting West Vine Street School with your child for Open House this week, please make sure you come out and visit the garden!

Lots has happened this summer in our garden.  Thanks to Mike Christie and his team as well as Matt Peel, the seat wall is completely finished.  Thank you as well to UBS in Westerly for the discount on the seat wall and other materials.  The butterfly garden behind the seat wall has been filled in with dirt thanks to Allan and Lydia Teixeria.  The pondless waterfall has been designed and installed by Stonington Gardens, and the first plants are even in!  Thank you to Stonington Gardens for donating the installation and the plants.  The pavers have been purchased and delivered from Lowe’s in Waterford, which gave us both a grant and a discount that paid for the vast majority of the pavers.  Cherenzia donated much of the processed gravel needed to prepare the garden site for the pavers and gave us a discount on the rest.  The next steps include building a shed (thanks again to Matt Peel for designing it and offering to build it as well) and installing the pavers.  Thanks to our grant from the Stonington Education Foundation, we will soon be ordering the raised planters and teaching materials.  We are going to start our planting in the spring!

Many, many thanks to the band Fat Betty for sponsoring a fundraising concert at the end of June.  It was a wonderful success!  Please be on the lookout for our fall fundraiser from Dutch Mill Bulbs.  We will be selling packages of fall bulbs for $6 a package.  Thank you so much for your help and support!

A couple of weeks ago, Ray Quinlin began the sitework to prepare our garden, clearing the space. Cherenzia donated the gravel base for our pavers, and UBS in Westerly helped us purchase the stone to build the seat wall around the butterfly garden and the water feature. Today, landscaper Mike Christie and his team started to install the seat wall. We’re very grateful to all of them for their help and support and very excited to see our garden taking shape!

Mike Christie and his team install the seat wall for the butterfly garden in June 2009.

We had our groundbreaking ceremony on Friday, May 15, 2009. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, as you can see from the pictures. Led by Autumn Nelson and Ben Cook, the entire school paraded out to the garden site. The children sang songs and we heard from our principal Mrs. Ginny Brown, our superintendent Mr. Mike McKee, Stonington’s First Selectman Mr. Ed Haberek, and parent and committee member Mrs. Julie Holland. Mrs. Enoch’s second grade class performed to a song about recycling and four talented student authors read: Austin Serio, Kylie Latawiec, Hailey-Mae Peel, and Cassie Onorato. Mrs. Henry told us about her class’ fundraising efforts as well. Then we were all thrilled to watch Mrs. Brown, Mr. McKee, Mr. Haberek, Mrs. Holland, teacher Mrs. Melissa Ribner, and two students pick up the shovels and make the first holes in the ground. Please visit our photos section for many more pictures from our wonderful event.

Click here to read more