CitySprouts Celebrates!

The CitySprouts School Garden Celebration on Saturday at the Tobin School was well attended and a terrific success for CitySprouts, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. It was also a great day for Cambridgeport. Our table with its informational display about our woodland shade garden and research about vertical gardening (which included information about Woolly Pockets and Green Living Technologies' growing panels) generated a lot of interest. The GLT living wall, courtesy of Jan Goodman at Cityscapes in Boston, brought many people to our table. Everyone who stopped by was either amazed or excited for us. School Superintendent Jeffrey Young was surprised at the different types of vertical growing and super enthusiastic. City Councillor Leland Cheung listened carefully about our school's shortage of sunny space and all our plans. He asked to keep him posted—he may have a lead for us re possible funding. Lastly, with the enterprising help of C'port middle schoolers and CitySprouts summer interns Kester and Allie, donations for our garden totaled $86. Thanks Allie and Kester!

Just as exciting, the day before the event two different articles about our garden plans appeared in the Cambridge press—the links are here:

Cambridge Chronicle — Cambridge’s CitySprouts celebrates edible wall, new garden

Cambridge Day — Cambridgeport kids bring 'edible walls' to CitySprouts celebration Saturday

Below are photos of our display at the event. Also be sure to check out the Cambridgeport PTO website, which has additional photos from planting day September 28.

Getting Our Garden Off the Ground!

Tuesday, September 28, was one of the busiest garden workdays so far, and rainy too, but parents, students and CitySprouts staff dug in and got dirty—and it looks beautiful!

Many thanks to Alice, our garden coordinator, and CitySprouts exec director Jane Hirschi who kept planting in the wet, wet rain along with garden committee member Andy and even dynamo 5th grader Helen S. Also a tremendous thanks to Jan of Boston plantscaping firm Cityscapes, who brought a 7-foot stainless-steel growing frame along with bunches of beautiful plants. Jan spent three hours showing 10 students how to carefully plant in each panel, then with Alice's and Andy's help hoisted the panels onto the frame in our entrance hall. Jan's moving this beautiful living wall to the Tobin school for us in time for Saturday's CitySprouts School Garden Celebration, from 11 am to 3 pm. (Thanks also to Wade Lindhorst, who stayed his chipper self even though we overtook so much Community School classes space.)

Lastly, many thanks to JK assistant teacher Kristen Emack, who took gobs of great photos, many of them below. With her skills we were able to land an article about our school in Cambridge Day, with possibly more coverage to come. See the article here.