Garrettsville – In honor of Earth Day, the James A. Garfield High School Environmental Club planted a tree behind the JAG Elementary School for the 2023 kindergarten class. Environmental Club founder Luke Finney helped organize the event. This junior helped found the club in March as a student-run club aiming to better the environment around their campus and community. The first project the group choose to tackle was to implement a recycling program at the High School.
The project at the Elementary School is the second project they’ve taken on. “We wanted to plant a class tree that the kindergarteners could grow along with,” Finney noted.
His father, Robert, donated the dogwood tree, mulch, and planting supplies while Environmental Club advisor Ms. Petrie provided the flower bulbs.
The planting event that took place on Thursday morning, April 20th, a bright and sunny morning. The over 90 kindergarteners are divided among five classes. To make the process run smoothly, two kindergarten classes come outside to help plant the tree while the remaining three classes helped plant flower bulbs. The dahlias would be positioned around the base of the newly planted tree.
For their part, excited kindergarteners filed outside, crayon boxes in hand, to find seats at tables in the pavilion behind the Elementary School. Over a dozen Environmental Club members were ready for them, settling them in with Earth Day themed coloring pages and sharing about Earth Day until the planting began.
That’s when groups of eager students were led to the planting site where Junior Owen Norris walked them through the planting process. As he measured the depth of the pre-dug hole with the tree, Norris explained the importance of not planting the tree too deeply. As he crumbled loose soil into the bottom, a small girl in a pink dress and sunglasses commented, “That’s so satisfying!”
As Norris removed the tree from its pot, he loosened the roots to encourage growth, explaining the process and the reasoning to his captive audience. “This makes me want to go plant something!” another kindergartener exclaimed. After the new tree was planted, mulched, and watered, the first group returned to their classrooms and the second wave of young students filed out for their time in the sunshine.
Once again, Norris walked the young students through the planting process, explaining that the small brown tubers, once planted and watered, would create beautiful blooms in JAG’s school colors of gold and black. The group watched intently as a small hole was dug for each tuber, rescuing earthworms displaced by the planting process. A young student urged his classmates to put them back in the dirt, protecting them from the hot sun, thus ensuring a Happy Earth Day for students, plants, and creatures alike.
