This blog moving to new address

We're Moving!

Future posts will all appear on our new blog; find us at our new address, https://friendsbaltsustainability.wordpress.com/

All prior posts are now available there as well. If you follow with RSS, there's a new feed for the new blog, just head over to the new blog and find the RSS logo in the sidebar. You can also follow by email, and you sign up over there.

With this new address, we will be able to highlight more aspects of sustainability at Friends, and to create some new related pages about aquaponics, the MD Green school application process, Native Plants Teaching Gardens, etc....

Contact Joshua Ratner with questions.

Yeehaw, Paw Paw!

This spring, paw paw, or Asimina triloba had beautiful dark maroon flowers. Sadly, I have no picture for you. But then, right after school started, it looked like this.

Paw paw tree, with fruit

Then on the morning of September 17, I was sad that I couldn't find any, and assumed the squirrels had gotten them before me. But then I found an uneaten, ripe one on the ground. Penny included for size to show you that this is NORTH AMERICA'S LARGEST NATIVE FRUIT. And it's growing on our campus. Yeehaw, paw paw!

And I, at least, thought it was delicious. My students in Literature and the Land, who had to write about it during a sensory descriptive writing exercise--they were not so sure. A few brave souls get a lot of credit for testing that fifth sense: taste. 

Friends School of Baltimore's Native Plants Teaching Garden: not just for looking at, y'all. 

Small Green Thumbs and a Big Orange Harvest

More Friday afternoon pictures of Friends school kids getting their (little) hands dirty. Here are Ms. Morrisey's students in in April, 2015:

.... And then scrubbing clean again:

But WAIT A MINUTE: those aren't the same kids, and they aren't scrubbing their hands. That's this year's Ms. Morrisey's kindergarten crew, cleaning this fall's carrot harvest:

,

These are small raised beds, but they get a lot of love and a lot of use in the spring and fall. There's a lot of jargon and debate about what "real" or "tangible" results should look like in twentieth-century education: personally, I think it should like this colander full of knobby, crunchy beta-carotene.

People and Planet First Conference in downtown Baltimore this weekend

I don't think anyone from Friends is presenting at this conference, but enough parents, teachers and fellow travelers have emailed us to recommend or say that they are going to this conference that I think I should pass along the information:
the People and Planet First Conference this weekend in downtown Baltimore sounds very exciting. And it's free!  Greenpeace USA Director and Story of Stuff founder Annie Leonard gives the evening keynote. Meanwhile, on campus, even before it's completely finished, the new fallen tree garden is already reducing erosion during today's (rather impressive) rainstorm:

The Birds and the Bees (and other pollinators too)

In late July, Catherine Zimmerman came to Friends to film as Friends students young and old planted the new Little Friends Swale (one of the most recent additions to the Native Plants Teaching Gardens) as part of The Meadow Project, a documentary film about the role that native plants and meadows play in supporting pollinators like bees and butterflies.





As she says, if you like butterflies, you need to give them something to eat! And if you like birds, you need to give them seeds and bugs and berries; native plants are the best way to encourage wildlife in our backyards.

 Zimmerman came to film a new planting at the swale because it's full of (among other things) winterberry, milkweed, and mountain mint--these are plants vital to a complete ecology at multiple trophic levels. Here's a post with some details about why we need swales like this and what the garden used to look like. And there's this Flickr set of the most recent planting.

And here are students in Mr. Ratner's US English elective, "Literature and the Land," where students read plenty of Dickinson, Thoreau and McPhee, but also get outside to choose one plant to study, sketch, and journal about all semester.

US students, Mountain Mint, and Cassia Marylandia

Also, see those white placards with the red flags? Those will tell you what you're looking at throughout the garden. If you just want to see the list of the 68(!) native plants species represented in the Little Friends Swale, well, here you go.



-Joshua Ratner

Water Water Everywhere and a lovely place to think: New fallen tree gardens

Here's a note from Bonnie Hearn about work happening on campus right now:

We have tried many times to obtain grants to fund the “fallen tree garden” near the Lower School playground.  One of our top priorities with all of our native plant teaching gardens is to mitigate runoff that is so detrimental to our campus.  The Lower School playground has been eroding for years due to runoff from heavy storms.  Please stop by and see the progress.  We ‘recycled’ the two large oak trees that we needed to remove for safety reasons.
                Once again, the Guilford Garden Club has stepped in with their efforts and designs in collaboration with European Landscapes to get this work completed.  Additionally, with the resources of the Native Plant Garden Fund, we should abate the runoff! 

You should really see it yourself. It's remarkable to see the work they've done, splitting logs, creating areas for the water to move, etc... And I can't wait to see what it looks like once it's planted! It's going to be another great place to sit and think on campus (except in the middle of or just after a rainstorm).

Introducing Aquaponics and the Maker Space

The Aquaponics club met this summer in the new Makerspace to get started, thanks to a generous grant from the Parents Association. Thanks also to Katherine Jenkins, club advisor and to Ramsay Antonio-Barnes, Makerspace advisor and powertool master!

What started with this:

became this:

which necessitated this:

 which made possible this:

Oh what's that? You want to see the final finished product and the sustainably raised fish? Yes, well it turns out this is, you know, kindacomplicatedlike.

Aquaponics Club is going to keep working on the design this Fall and we'll let you know when there are fish and grow beds to see!

Reading, Writing, and Arugula

9th Grade environmental science students taking notes, trying the radishes, and learning about Real Foods Farms in May 2015.

We were studying the nitrogen cycle and agriculture at the time. On the farm we focused on their nitrogen management practices ( composting, legume cover crops, and a bioswale ) and then planted the Native American trio of the 3 Sisters ( corn, beans and squash) which is both nutritionally and ecologically sustainable. ( FS donated the seeds and seedlings )

What Blooms: Beardtongue and Bluestar

Another early summer post:

Kay says:

This white and blue combination is Penstemon digitalis 'Husker Red'--Beardtongue--and Amsonia tabernaemontana 'Blue Ice'--Bluestar--, a cultivar of Amsonia tabernaemontana that has been selected for its dwarf size and peacock blue flowers as well as its brilliant yellow and maroon fall foliage.  

Amsonias are a very useful, carefree garden plant that tolerate many conditions--wet, dry, sun, shade.  They have various leaf shapes and heights, and are a wonderful plant for massing and texture.

You can find these in gym beds, beautiful anytime of year, blooming in early June. 

Ask Kay What's Blooming? #5 Sweetspire and Beardtongue

The summer got away, so these posts aren't about what's blooming now--these are from early June.

Kay says:

Virginia Sweetspire--in this case Itea virginica 'Merlot'--is a wonderful four season shrub that is an important design element in the Staircase Garden.  It forms colonies and prefers moist conditions, so we have placed it on the uphill side of the sitting walls and near boulders where water will collect.  This generous plant offers dense red twigging in winter, lustrous green leaves that turn brilliant red in fall, and fragrant creamy white flower racemes--"spires"--in spring is a wonderful nectar plant for butterflies and a great plant for massing and stabilizing banks in the garden.

The second plant in this white and white color pairing is Penstemon digitalis 'Husker Red'--Beardtongue--a signature plant throughout the Native Plant Teaching Gardens.  Its burgundy basal leaves are semi-evergreen, and in late May, clouds of white flower spikes can be seen in many gardens.  Allowing these spikes to form seedheads and drop seed has created great drifts of plants that form a sturdy groundcover. 
By covering as much soil as possible with plants, there is less space available for weeds so that less mulch is necessary in the beds, conserving labor, money, and all of the fossil fuels necessary to transport mulch. It also reduces the opportunity for weed seeds that may travel within the mulch to be brought into the gardens.