Wild Ones Gathering
September 7 and 11, 2019
Keysor Elementary School, Kirkwood, Missouri
Attendance:
Saturday, 7 September – 19 members and 8 guests
Wednesday, 11 September – 25 members and 11 guests
Photos by Sherri DeRousse
On Saturday morning our tour guides were Melissa John, a teacher and Dr. Meredith Byers with the Project IDEA program (Imagine, discover, explore adventure). On Wednesday night, Jennifer Schamber, an involved parent and Jay Hoffarth, who designed many of the gardens, led the tour. Jay also worked with Metropolitan Sewer District to install the rain gardens.
Keysor School earned the 2018 US National Green Ribbon School Award for sustainability, the highest honor a school can earn. In 2017, Wild Ones St. Louis gave them a grant to put in a butterfly/bird garden. Keep reading and you will learn how this school has achieved high honors and how they teach their students about sustainability, and playing and planting a living landscape.
The school is on a one-acre lot with no traditional playground; that means No asphalt! For the past ten years they have invented a more natural play area for the 500+ kindergarten thru 5th grade students. The grounds are ADA compliant and feature a bird sanctuary, 2 rain gardens, a pollinator garden, a sensory garden, a vegetable garden, a beehive, and a bubbler fountain with plans to add more!
As you walk thru the area you see the StoryBook posts with a description of each area. Even the sidewalk has Yoga poses painted on it for the kids to follow. There are many benches along the way where the children can come outside to relax and refocus. In the back of the garden is the ‘K building’. It is a solar-powered outdoor space for science and math study. Murals decorate the building showing the parts of plants.
Parents also devote time to the garden to help in its maintenance. And this year, the Art students got involved, by painting old railroad ties and putting birdhouses on the top. The colors were a real bright spot!
Project IDEA has transformed the area into a sustainable and inclusive outdoor space. It serves as an outdoor extension of the school with no steel or plastic structures.
So next time you are driving in Kirkwood, stop by the school and take a walk around to see what an inviting, fun space that has been created.
