Summary

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          Our idea is to create a mini arboretum. We want to increase the diversity of plant species on campus.  This is important because currently our school has a minimal number of plants. Last year students calculated that only 40 different species of plants existed on our campus. It is important to increase the number of plant species on campus to provide more habitat for wild life. The Gate Community School in Lutz, Florida and a team of researchers from the University of South Florida in Tampa called “the Tampa Bay School Gardening Research Group” has published a report on the benefits of having gardens in schools. One benefit is that school gardens have a huge benefit to education. They provide hands-on experience in many subjects “including the natural and social sciences, math, language arts (e.g., through garden journaling), visual arts (e.g., through garden design and decoration), and nutrition”.  We are hoping that our mini arboretum will be able to provide all of those examples above.
          The reason that our campus does not have plan diversity is because we are a fairly new school. Our school became a charter school in 2009 and moved to a new campus. We obtained an old elementary school campus and are slowly making the campus our own. We hope to create this mini arboretum so that future generations of students will have diverse plant species on campus. We hope to receive donations from multiple organizations. We are currently applying for a grant through kidsgardening.org and seedsforlearning.org. We are also contacting Home Depot about donating materials. We hope to be able to get all of the materials donated or purchased with a discount. We are hoping that his mini arboretum will be sustained and maintained throughout the years by students at Da Vinci Charter Academy.