“Garden on the Go” Unveiled at Findley Elementary School
Findley principal Barb Adams helps with some of the plants that are part of the school’s new and unique garden project.
“If walls could talk” what a lot the one that went up Monday morning at Findley Elementary might have to say. Instead, while it grows and moves from classroom to classroom at the Northside learning hub this Living Wall will leave the talking to the students it inspired to speak on its behalf.
DMPS alums Michael McCullough (Lincoln) and Jordan Garvey (Roosevelt) met a few years back at Iowa State University. Together they studied landscape architecture and ways to “bring the outside inside and the inside outside,” as McCullough explained to a creative batch of Findley 5th graders. Outside of class they collaborated musically, too, playing gigs around campus, something the kids at Findley can relate to as they discover their artistic selves in all areas of their curriculum at the district’s pilot Turnaround Arts site.
McCullough would later start his own landscaping business where his collaboration with Garvey continued. While operating that enterprise he is also pursuing a graduate degree in Sustainable Design via independent study at Boston Architectural College. When he was hired by Findley art teacher Lisa Hesse’s father for a home project it led to an idea that culminated Monday morning.
McCullough’s LEAP (L=Living Walls, E=Education, A=Art, P=Philanthropy) for a Purpose design concept fashions a “wall” on wheels out of recycled materials such as water bottles that is wallpapered with plants. Strawberries and basil were just a couple examples of root balls the kids got to swaddle into pouches and mount on the wall at Monday’s installation. The designers were there to explain how the wall comes equipped with a water basin and a pump to keep the plants irrigated and lights to simulate the sun’s role in making them grow.
That’s the basic science of how it works. But the emphasis at the ceremony was on the artsy side. Tableaus or frozen pictures are a favorite means of expression at Findley where the daily mantra is Dream Big. Two that were performed by students Monday depicted the life cycles of bees and tulips. And there was poetry about the school’s new Living Wall which, by the way, was made possible through a $5,000 grant that Hesse secured from Lowe’s after her dad tipped her off to what McCullough and Garvey were up to.
Students Sydne Israel, Lynana Summers, Esra Abdella and Ricquez Martin performed a poem they composed that alternated stanzas with bongo beats supplied by Ricquez.
“The wall grows with vines representing ties between students,” recited Sydne.
Esra: “Air goes through leaves and is cleaned for us to breathe.”
Lynauna: “Mobile and living; green and pretty; quiet, but speaking a million words.”
The wall and the kids and the bongos harmonized. Arts and science; past, present and future; it all came together in a Findley hallway.
McCullough told the kids that his parents had grown up in the same Northside neighborhood where they live. He used to go to school with the children of their principal, Barb Adams. Everyone connected.
The new “Garden on the Go” will remain at Findley indefinitely. This summer it will make some public rounds at sponsored sites where the hope is that enough support will be generated to enable some scale-up. There is talk already of something similar at Hanawalt Elementary where Garvey’s father teaches. And the Living Wall concept is being applied at faraway installations in Malaysia and Mexico.
No wonder this project found its way to Findley where, rumor has it, a significant environmental stewardship distinction is soon to be awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program. The place is alive with dreams growing bigger all the time. The walls may not literally talk but neither can they keep the secrets to all the successes happening inside.
