Spring Fling GEO-Ed Happenings

GEO-Ed will be in Room 6 at Spring Fling. Stop in and get your hands dirty making a seed bomb or starting a seedling. Help create a sign for our Community Gardens. Pick up some gardening information for your own gardens.

Perennial Donations
Bring a piece of your home garden. Spring is an excellent time to divide perennials and the AALC gardens would love a piece of your garden. Bring a perennial divided from your house in a pot with some dirt and a label describing it, and we will happily plant it during our upcoming spring planting enrichment. Bring perennials to Room 6 at Spring Fling or at the GEO-Ed table next to the Reception Desk before May 8th.

Compost and Mulch Drive
Ann Arbor residents can stop by the Ann Arbor Compost Center at 4150 Platt Road, Ann Arbor MI 48108 to pick up free compost.  Grab a bucket of compost on your way to Spring Fling and deliver it to the compost pile near the tool shed off the school parking lot! 

Free compost is available for pickup from 8am to 12pm, visit the We Care Organics website details. 

Have an extra bag of mulch?  Bring that too and leave it by the tool shed.

Watering Can Drive
We'd also like to encourage donations of watering cans to your student's classroom. It's like they have legs and walk away on their own! We could use more so if you have an extra one collecting dust in your tool shed or see one on sale at a garden center, we'd gratefully put it to good use in the classroom or in the gardens.  Feel free to bring it to Room 6 during Spring Fling.

Rain Garden Dig on May 3rd from 10am to 2pm
Join us on Sunday May 3rd as we prepare for the upcoming Rain Garden Enrichment.  Bring a shovel and help dig out the garden area and install the fence.

Plant Sale
Stay tuned for details about our upcoming plant sale!  Look for the plant sale order form next week. Orders will be due back by May 8th. Plants will be provided by Sell's Greenhouse, Cinzori Organic Herbs and Vegetables, and Native Plant Nursery.

Celebrating Earth Day at Ann Arbor Learning Community

Students and teachers at Ann Arbor Learning Community celebrated Earth Day this week by planting trees, shrubs and seeds throughout the school grounds and helping to clean up the property.

Special thanks to Pinter's Flowerland for the donation of compost and dogwood trees and to Nature and Nurture for their fabulous discount on 15 fruit trees and shrubs. We were able to plant everything despite Mother Nature's rather frigid temperatures and occasional snow flurries!

Early Primary classes planted 4 Nanking cherry shrubs, while Primary classes planted 3 apricot trees in the orchard and cold weather veggie seeds in their vegetable boxes.

Intermediate classes planted 4 paw paw trees near the butterfly garden and sunflower seeds in the art room garden. The Middle School planted 2 pear trees and 2 apple trees in the orchard, plus 2 dogwood trees and 1 dwarf serviceberry by the front walk.

It will be wonderful to watch these trees and shrubs grow over the years, providing a tremendous opportunity for students to cultivate their interest in the environment and build the knowledge and skills needed to care for our earth.

AALC Receives Evergreen Status as a Michigan Green School

Congratulations AALC for receiving Evergreen Status, the highest award given to a Michigan Green School!

Michigan Green Schools is a non-profit 501(c)3 agency dedicated to assisting all Michigan schools – public and private – achieve environmental goals which include protecting the air, land, water and animals of our state along with world outreach through good ecological practices and the teaching of educational stewardship of students pre-kindergarten through senior high school.

Evergreen status requires schools to complete 20 total activities, including at least 2 activities from each of the following categories:  reduce/reuse/recycle, energy, environmental protection, and miscellaneous.

Way to go Ann Arbor Learning Community!

AALC Garden Donation Wish List

GEO-Ed is gearing up for Spring, and you can help! Please consider donating your time and/or materials.

Please contact us at aalcgeo@gmail.com to coordinate a donation to one of these GEO-Ed projects!

Here are some of the things we need:

• Early Primary Butterfly Gardeners would like 200 feet of landscape fabric and metal garden stakes (for pinning landscape fabric) and a selection of larger rocks or field stones to finish lining their walk.


• Gardeners in the Primary Vegetable Garden and Pumpkin Patch could use two bags of seed-starting mix and some hardware cloth to finish their defense of the pumpkin patch from marauding ground hogs.


• The Intermediate Herb Garden needs weed sheeting, and perennial herb transplants.


• The Middle School Perennial Garden would welcome asparagus crowns, jerusalem artichoke tubers, or other perennial food crops.


• The Rain Garden being installed in May needs coneflower, shasta daisy, and black-eyed susan transplants.


• Gardeners in the Fruit Orchard would like plant 3 to 5 new apple trees. We'd also like to plant serviceberry trees near the back entrance of the school.


• GEO-Ed is also looking for used tires (up to 100) to protect tree seedlings from overzealous landscapers. 

Gardening Resources for Parents, Teachers and Students

Thank you to everyone who stopped by the Garden Resource Fair today!  The fair followed AALC's annual Eating O' the Green celebration, which encourages students to enjoy healthy, naturally green foods.

The fair included an introduction to AALC's GEO-Ed Committee and the new Adopt-a-Garden program.  Informational flyers were available featuring tips for starting seeds, growing potatoes, vertical gardening, gardening with children and more.

Certified Master Gardeners answered gardening questions and offered helpful advice.  Children were invited to create garden art including flowers and fairy doors.  Teachers were encouraged to fill out a GEO-Ed survey to share their thoughts and needs.  The fair was a wonderful way to celebrate the end of winter and the beginning of spring!

Special thanks to the many individuals who helped make this event possible, as well as the following organizations for contributing raffle items or materials about their programs and offerings:

• Project Grow
• Nature and Nurture
• Catching Fireflies
• Ann Arbor Seed Company
• Food Gatherers
• Growing Hope

Congratulations to Tracy and Cindy on winning the gift baskets! 

AALC Garden Resource Fair



G.E.O. Ed Committee and Adopt-a-Garden Program

Project Grow Community Gardens

Gardening Tips and Advice

Resources from Local Organizations

Gift Baskets featuring giveaways from Project Grow, Nature and Nurture,
Ann Arbor Seed Company, and Catching Fireflies

 Feel free to email us at aalcgeo@gmail.com with feedback about the fair or ideas for future events.

Join us at the Garden Resource Fair!

Exciting New Enrichments and Events!

Narcissus Bulb in Bloom from the
Fall Bulbs and Winter Seeds enrichment

Ann Arbor Learning Community's enrichment program has provided students with many unique gardening, environmental and outdoor educational opportunities this school year. In early fall children planted perennials, learned about vermicomposting and built bird houses that were distributed to area businesses.

Other enrichments included a Fall Bulbs and Winter Seed Sowing enrichment course during which students planted tulips and garlic in many school gardens, learned how to overwinter seed trays for spring planting, and how to force bulbs to bloom indoors. Some of the children also worked on creating a fairy garden, building space outside one of the Early Primary classrooms.

The most recent GEO-Ed committee meeting brought forth some exciting ideas for upcoming enrichment activities. Over the next few months students will have the opportunity to help build an outdoor classroom, make terra cotta irrigation bottles for school gardens, and participate in the creation of a rain garden.

Mark Your Calendar for the Garden Resource Fair on March 17th!
The GEO-Ed committee is organizing a Garden Resource Fair in March for teachers, students, and parents.  The event will take place from 3pm to 5pm on March 17th, and will coincide with AALC's annual school-wide Eating of the Green celebration which promotes eating naturally green foods.

Our vision is to provide information to help teachers work on the gardens at school and encourage different types of gardening at home and in the community. We're hoping to round up a few more families for our school Adopt-a-Garden program as well.

Families will be able to get advice from master gardeners, learn tips for planning and starting their own garden, attend a tour around AALC's garden areas and more. We are inviting a number of organizations to join us for the event, including Project Grow.

More event details coming soon!

In the meantime, feel free to join us for the next GEO-Ed committee meeting on Tuesday, March 3rd at 3:45pm in the Great Room.

Reminder:  Seed Sale Fundraiser Ends March 6th!
The annual AALC PTSO Fedco Seed Sale Fundraiser ends March 6th! Plan your garden during these cold, snowy days and invest in our school at the same time. This seed sale offers both conventional and organic seeds from a reputable seed cooperative in Maine.

Go to www.fedcoseeds.com/forms/aalc.pdf and www.fedcoseeds.com/forms/aalcOG.pdf to view and print order forms. All orders and checks (made out to AALC PTSO) are due by 3/6/15.