Checking for bluebonnet seeds at Small Middle School.
For 11 years, David Matthews, a teacher at Small Middle School in Austin, has taught kids to garden. Trees, shrubs, wildflowers. If it grows in Central Texas, you are likely to find it growing somewhere around the school.
Small Middle School occupies a large building. Three stories of eager kids: some of whom have learned how to grow plants from seeds, transplant them, water them, and mulch them for hot summers when no students are around. Along the way, they learn the types of wildlife, including native bees, that visit the plants in their gardens.
The kids know to look for sleeping bees in the Opuntia blossoms.
A large Aloysia gratissima is blooming this week.
A beautiful Goldenball Lead Tree (Leucaena retusa) provides some sweet-smelling flowers for the native bees. See the close-up of the flower below. This tree can be hard to find at plant nurseries. Maybe if we started asking for it and buying it, more native plant nurseries would carry it. It's really quite beautiful. Mr. Matthews' kids have planted several of them around the school.
This Texas Lantana (Lantana urticoides) provides a nice large patch for the native bees.
Agarita (Mahonia trifoliolata) blooms in February and March in Central Texas. Early spring native bees are attracted to the sweet blossums. This plant–one of several in the gardens at Small– already has fruit.
The kids are working on establishing another new garden this spring. Even young gardeners know to keep the tools neat and clean and to put them away when finished for the day.
Creative minds keep trying new solutions! Here the kids are drilling indentations in stone for collecting water for the bees . . . and other wildlife.
An overview of the newest garden bed.
The kids also start some of their plants from seeds. Mr. Matthews–teacher, gardener, and inspiration–makes sure the kids learn how plants and insects interact with each other and the rest of their environment.
David Matthews has set up a website describing the Small Middle School Gardens. To visit it, click on Small Middle School Gardens. David has posted some nice photos and good stories about the kids and the gardens on the website. Please take a look–and be sure to leave him a THANK-YOU comment for creating and inspiring the next generation of Bee Watchers.
Taking kids outdoors and letting them plant and tend gardens is SO far past what the duties of a middle school teacher are. And–get this– David is an English and Social Studies teacher.
This is Hands-On Science in its best form. No pat answers to lab procedures outside. David is teaching kids to think about native plants, about how plants interact with their plant community, about the relationships between animals and plants in lawns, gardens, and artificial environments. He has taught them how to start a plant from a seed and how to sell that plant to raise money to fund their gardens. These kids do more than read about ecology–they do ecology.
Texas Bee Watchers extends a big Texas-sized THANK-YOU to David Matthews and the 1500 kids who have made Bee, Butterfly, and Wildlife Gardens at Small Middle School in Austin over the last 11 years. All together, your gardens at Small Middle School are designated the #3 Official Certified Bee-Friendly Garden in Texas.
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