One goal for the YJP students was to get the school yard recognized as a wildlife habitat. Their first step was to investigate which recognized Audubon "Sanctuary Species" were already in the garden. They easily found more than the ten required species and sent off a request for a site visit. They also certified the schoolyard as a National Wildlife Federation Certified Wildlife Habitat. (Interested in becoming an Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary at your school or home? Here's how.)

The second phase, beginning in late May 2018, was to clear invasive species from the existing site.

We eventually dug the sod and invasive species out by hand in about 50% of our 40'x20' pollinator garden, and tilled the remainder. That's a lot of student and volunteer hours!

Students and volunteers worked as quickly as possible, trying to finish up the garden preparation before the end of school so we could plant the natives that had been donated to the school garden, but we ran out of time. So over the summer, we moved on to Phase III.

Since we didn't manage to get our native plants into the pollinator garden before school let out in June, we put them in a holding space in the school's AFAC garden, which is adjacent to the pollinator garden to keep them happy until fall. Then we decided to take advantage of the hot summer weather to help invasive-proof the garden. We had learned the hard way in our AFAC garden that tilling a garden is good at knocking back unwanted plants, but grass and other weeds pop right back up within days or weeks. After all the hard work the students put in clearing the garden of invasive species, we wanted to be really sure the natives would be able to establish without competition once they were planted.

First, we researched. Our garden advisors were divided: which would be better, black plastic or clear plastic? Clear plastic "cooks" the roots and seeds of the weeds, and black plastic blocks out the sun. But which would work best for us? We found research indicating that black plastic hits the ground running (so to speak!) with good results, but that clear plastic was a clear winner over the long term. Since this is a learning garden, we decided to experiment ourselves, and purchased an equal amount of clear and black plastic to cover the garden over the summer.

Second, we tilled. We tilled the half we'd already dug out and mulched by hand, as well as the rest of the pollinator garden which we'd mowed and cleared with a hoe. July 2018, tilling the cleared pollinator garden:

https://www.facebook.com/events/319662048566328/?post_id=319662961899570&view=permalink

Third, we put down the clear and black plastic right after tilling. (It took TWO rounds of tilling, because the grass kept coming back before the plastic arrived by mail order.)

Fourth, we waited. After we put down the clear plastic, black plastic, and a control area with no plastic, we monitored the garden over the summer. The weather varied from extremely wet to very hot. Wet weather is good for solarization, because the water is necessary to "cook" the weeds once it gets hot again. Or at least, that's the theory. Here's what we really discovered:

Early August 2018, the control area, which had been manually dug out but left uncovered.

Early August 2018, the area covered by black plastic was muddy but plant-free

Early August 2018, the clear plastic was bursting at the seams with grass. Apparently, we created the perfect grass greenhouse with our clear plastic!

It was really tempting to pull up the clear plastic and dig it out so that the space would be ready for the students to plant in September. But we remembered that solarization takes several months to take effect, not just the 6 weeks we'd tried it-- and that this science experiment only has learning value if it's there for the students when they get back into the garden in September! So we gritted our teeth and left the clear plastic installed.

Late September 2018, you can see the results when we finally pulled back the clear and black plastic for our students to see the results of our experiment-- nothing growing under the black, and lots of tall grass under the clear.

Now for the fun part! We spent all the rainy summer days researching native pollinator gardens.

We read a lot:

We asked experts:

We measured our garden and calculated the exposure:

We visited other native gardens for inspiration:

We grew some plants from seed:

We grew some native pollinators by accident, simply by ignoring home gardens and spending too much time at the school garden! Did you know that a garden left unattended can spontaneously erupt with milkweed vine (so sweet-smelling), black eyed Susans, pink wild bean flowers, evening primrose, and more?

We asked for donations:

We even learned about how and why donations can be a little dangerous, if you can't tell your natives from your nativars:

So we re-evaluated. Arlington Public Library's native pollinator garden volunteers have offered us some of their extra plants when we help out at their volunteer days. Some native plants we know we will be able to positively identify, because they don't have easily confused cultivars/nativars. But we know we'll need more resources to fill 800 square feet of garden! So we have begun to identify and apply for grants to help fund the remainder of this learning garden rehab.

• Earth Sangha Plant Grant (this application is almost complete!)
• Wild Ones Seeds for Education (due October 15)
• Annie's Grants for Gardens is for edible gardens-- but if we get one, it frees up more of our garden budget for the native pollinator garden (due 11/1)
• And we can fundraise directly with Donor's Choose.

Stay tuned to this page, or follow us on Facebook for live updates. The Yellow Jacket Period students will be back in the garden in late September, so be sure to check in to learn how our Occultation vs. Solarization project ends up and watch as our students transplant the natives we've been carefully tending all summer.

Draft Planting Diagrams and Plant Lists

This is a draft planting diagram. Our next steps is to take this to our expert advisors and get feedback on what to change and what to keep, and then send this in as part of our Earth Sangha Plant Grant application. Wish us luck!

Here's a video of the plants donated from Central Library's native plant garden:

And the plants from Earth Sangha's Plant Grant: