Hamilton Habitat

We have a garden at our school called the Hamilton Habitat which is maintained by ourHabitat class along with parent volunteers and our urban harvest partner. The goals of our habitat class are to give students an opportunity to experience gardening, to learn about the environment, ecology, biology, and nutrition. We have also discovered that the habitat is a great place to work on useful skills like communication, cooperation, time management, problem solving, and citizenship. The garden is spread out in several areas of our campus and is divided into different types of gardens, we have several decorative gardens, three production gardens for growing crops, a textile garden, a bog garden, two butterfly gardens, and lots of fruit trees planted wherever we could find a spot. The habitat class has 30 students and our garden is our outdoor learning lab for the Habitat class, the science classes and any other class that wishes to take their lesson outside which expands our reach to the 1300 student population. In our Habitat class the students run the show they decide everything with guidance from their teacher and our mentors. Students make a plan including a timeline, purchasing list, and task list. The students do all the labor, except when special skills are needed and then we call on our parent volunteers to help. Parent volunteers help out several days a week with transportation of purchased items, building and care of structures, professional advice and preparation of recipes. Our garden is sustained by fundraising including a bulb sale, water sales at two school events and a spring farmers market, donations, and grants.