Spring Cleaning, Spring Blooms, and Spring Plant Sale 3/26-27

Each semester our school participates with the citywide Keep Austin Beautiful Clean Sweep. We clean multiple areas of school including Monterey Oaks Blvd., our nature trail and the school grounds.

Our native gardens have also started blooming this week. They will look even more amazing in the coming weeks.

Our Spring plant sale will be this Thursday and Friday March 26 and 27 from 9-4:30. We can also stay later by request. Here is a sampling of the plants  we will be receiving from Far South Nursery and Emerald Garden.

Socuty Garlic

Spiderwort

Pink Ferry Duster

Bottle Brush

Compact Orange Sage

Gopher Plant

Maiden Hair Fern

Anisacanthus Tangerine

Artemisia Silver King

Indian Mallow

Bulbine Orange

Chile Pequin

Trailing Wine cup

Dwarf Cherry Barbados

White Beautyberry

Coral Bean

Mexican Plum

Fig Tx BrnTrky

Evergreen Sumac

Smoke Tree

Kidney Wood

Wax Myrtle- Dwarf

Dogwood

Mexican Olive

Anacacho Orchid

Texas Gold Yucca

Columbeu

Black Dalea

Texas Gay feather

Kangaroo Paw

Brush Sunset

Cream spread cantana

Mexican honeysuckle

fragrant mistflower

native honeysuckle

Blue glow agave

crassula coccinea- campfire

Marginata agave

Starting a new garden.

In an effort to continue to naturalize our less than exciting areas of campus, we started new garden! It is located at the front of the school near the entrance to the teacher lot. Very close to one of our other National Wildlife Federation Schoolyard habitats and our 5000 gallon cistern We laid out tarps so we lose as little soil as possible, put cardboard down to stop the grass from growing, and created berms for contour and a place to plant. We will purchase plants from Emerald Garden once we receive mulch from the district. They graciously provide mulch to our campus at no cost and we couldn't be more gracious! You rock Austin ISD Facilities!

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 Plant Sale Starts Tomorrow: Final Plant Additions

Students have been busy sprucing up the greenhouse and its environs. Our good friends at Emerald Gardens Nursery have expanded our plant offerings greatly. Plant sizes range from 4 inch pots to 5 gallons. Prices start at $3 and go up to $50.
Also new this year, 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 the additions:
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.

Monumental Project Takes Shape

Collaboration is a wonderful thing.

Having secured a grant from the National Wildlife Federation, Nate Rosenberg, Sylvia Brown, and I attended training on creating an outdoor classroom/wildlife habitat. Mr. Rosenberg took the lead in coordinating the project. His classes chose the site in front of the school. It has several favorable attributes. It is located opposite the purple martin houses, it is close to a water source, it is in highly visible site that becomes muddy in wet weather.

Our Industrial Technologies classes under the supervision of Ronnie Scott built 10 3-person benches.

Preparing the site was a semester long project. Several classes participated: Ms. Brown's and Mr. Brooks's Environmental Science classes, Mr. Rosenbergs's 6th grade Science classes, my Taste of Science and Native Plants and Animals classes (a proto-GreenTech project).

The benches augment the seating capacity for students awaiting parent pick up as well.

Classes remove the bermuda grass, leaving as much of the topsoil as possible. Newspapers and commercial weed barrier cloth came next. Students carted in dozens of wheelbarrow loads of a mix that is heavy in decomposed granite. This adds a lot of minerals to the worn out, clay rich soil, as well as, provides a stable medium for mounding.

Rosenberg's design incorporates a curved berm that mimics the curve of the adjacent sidewalk.

Medina Garden Nursery donated over $200 worth of plants. The salvia greggi, lantana, prairie verbena, and some of the grasses were grown in our campus greenhouse. Parent donations and the remaining grant funds paid for the rest of the plants which we purchased from nearby Emerald Garden Nursery at a super generous discount. AISD helped out with soil and mulch. We also bought a load of GeoGrower's excellent berm mix.

Students worked throughout the day with the goal of getting all the plants in the ground before the 3:30 bell.

Temperatures soared. By the end of school we cracked the century mark.

We got most of the plants in, mulched around their bases and watered them thoroughly.

Click to view photos of the planting frenzy.