Spring Plant Sale and Funky Chicken Coop Tour

The Spring Plant Sale dates have been set! 

This year we will be having a 3 day event over 2 weeks! The first week the sale is on Thursday April 10 and Friday April 11 during the school day from 9 am to 5 pm. This will allow us to have a large number of student volunteers and will accommodate attendants' varying schedules. The second week the plant sale will be on Saturday April 19 from 10 am to 4 pm. We are attempting to test out which arrangement of dates and days will help raise more fund for the Green Academy. As always we will be selling native Texas plants, herbs, and vegetables that have been propagated by students and donated generously Emerald Garden Nursery. (http://www.pondsandgarden.com/)

 Plant sizes range from 4 inch pots to 5 gallons. Prices start at $3 and go up to $50.
Students will be available to give tours of our extensive gardens. If you see it growing on our campus, there's a good chance we will have it for sale.
Don't forget to buy a t-shirt or two!

Here are list of the plants we usually carry. We can get many others and usually will have many more. 


Texas Red Bud
Mexican Plum
Fragrant Mimosa (in bloom)
Possumhaw
Yaupon Holly
Wax Myrtle
Anacacho Orchid (in bloom)
Crossvine (in bloom)
Montezuma Cypress
Monterey Oak
Red Yucca (in bloom)
Twist Leaf Yucca
Manfreda (in bloom)
Gulf Muhly
Lindheimer Muhly
Inland Sea Oats
Blue Eyed Grass (in bloom)
White Coneflower
Purple Coneflower (in bloom)
Cedar Sage
Salvia Cleavelandii
Snake Herb
Red Columbine
Wedelia
Fluttermills
Datura
Texas Betony
Wooly Stemoda
Chocolate Daisy
Texas Rock Rose (in bloom)
Apache Plume (in bloom)
Chili Pequin
Arroyo Sweetwood
Escarpment Cherry

Larger trees and other species are available by request.


The Saturday date was also chosen to go along with our inclusion in the Funky Chicken Coop Tour. (http://austincooptour.org/) Please visit their site


for more information.  This is some of the information provided about the event on their site:

The 6th Annual Austin Funky Chicken Coop Tour, April 19, 2014. Begin the day with a stop by Coop Tour Headquarters, at Sunshine Community Gardens in a cooperative arrangement withTexas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, 4814 Sunshine Drive, Austin, Texas 78756. The Tour’s coops are open for tour goers from 10:00am-4:00pm. Coop Tour Headquarters will include coop tour and cycling registration, vendors, and a free education center, nestled throughout Sunshine Community Gardens, with their own onsite coop and chickens.
https://www.facebook.com/AustinFunkyChickenCoopTour 
Twitter @afct
Flickr athttp://www.flickr.com/photos/austincooptour

Spring Semester Update

It seems that every semester begins with its own trials and trebulations. Getting back into the routine always takes a little time, especially when extending both personal and work families.

Students are fully engulfed in the final class of the Green Academy and working hard on their independent study projects. They will soon be posting short updates on their progress directly to this blog. We have students working on introducing bees to Small's habitat, protecting Black-Capped Vireos, improving the air quality of the classroom environments, installing native and community gardens in the surrounding neighborhoods, and much more. A group of students are rehabilitating and securing the chicken coop to make it more functional and safe. We plan on being on the Funky Chicken Coop tour later this year.

The main focus of many students' projects is an area of land in the middle of Travis Country neighborhood. The land is near 4800 Trail West. It was originally set aside to be developed into an elementary school. When that did not pan out the land was discussed being developed into housing and other not so favorable outcomes. The land always remained in AISD's hands. When discussion of selling the land came up again, the Green Academy saw the oppotunity to take over maintenance of the land. The plan is to turn the land into an educational preserve because the land contained many geological features, plants, and habitats similar to a primitive Austin habitat before settlement. Students are working to increase the presence of the Greater Roadrunner, Chimney Swifts, Monarch butterflies, Eastern Cottontail, and many native snakes. Other students are removing invasive plants such as Nandina, and controlling the presence of Ash Juniper saplings. We hope this land will be used and improved for generations to come.

The sixth grade classes are just now beginning to understand the importance of garden management and its role in habitat creation. The World Outside class is deep in a biomimcry unit and the Native Plant classes are exploring reptiles and amphibians.

Mr. Brooks' classes are deconstructing keyhole gardens due to rodent issues and reusing the cinder blocks to make a more conventional garden. He is still working to install more rain gardens and is cooperating with the community garden.

Our biggest announcement is that we were approved to interview and hire a new teaching assistant for the Green Academy. In November Carly Surratt joined the Small family. She is orginally from Southeast Texas. She went to school as Texas State University and studied Geography. She has travelled to Ecuador and Colorado to work in a natural educational setting. She has already been a great asset and has allowed us to accomplish many more of our goals. We hope that she will be around for many years to come.