When spring starts next year, students at St. Lucy’s School will literally be able to stop and smell the flowers.
On Tuesday, October 26, 5th, 6th and 7th graders from the school’s student council were digging in the dirt outside the school, rushing to plant about 200 bulbs before the weather starts to turn. The planting was the first step in a beautification project, led by the student council, that will result in hundred more flowers outside the school and church.
“It’s wonderful,” school principal Jane Stefanini said. “It really shows the school spirit and their commitment to the school.”
This year the students will plant both tulips and hyacinths in the two plots outside the front of the building at 830 Mace Avenue. Next spring the group of about 16 children that make up the student government will plant the flowers outside the church building.
“We all agreed that we wanted to do this so we could bring up the school, to make it more presentable, so it won’t look so dull,” seventh-grader, and representative Diana Valentin-Miller said, adding that shelearned to garden from helping her grandmother. “And it’s fun.We really enjoy doing these activities together.”
While digging the holes and tossing the small bulbs back and forth, the kids were enjoying themselves on Tuesday.
Soon though, they will take on the responsibility of making sure the garden is well watered and the weeds do not choke the young bulbs.
“They will need to maintain it in the spring; weeding watering, the whole nine yards,” Laura Gwinn moderator of the student council, said. “It was their idea to do this.”
While the entire council had to agree on the project before they could start, seventh-grade class president, Xavier Soto-Burgos, is credited with first coming up with the idea for the project.
He got a little outside inspiration for the project.
“My dad works at Kennedy High School and I see so many schools that have their own gardens and so I thought why can’t we,” he said. “I actually asked for it last year, and it finally came true.”
This is the first time the student council has planted a garden for the school.
In previous years the council has focused on sponsoring actives through dress-down days, bake-sales and fundraisers.
The more than 200 bulbs were donated to the school from an out-of-county nursery.
