Group Cleans Up Reading School Garden Corner

Team intro—

Gabby: 2nd year majoring in Criminal Justice 

Karina: 1st year majoring in Early Childhood Education

Marie: 1st year majoring in Wildlife and Fisheries Science 

Dan: 2nd year majoring in Business

 

Our Service

The organization we worked with was Northeast Middle school, we were asked to clean up their garden that was infested with bugs, overgrown plants, and trash. We wanted to provide Northeast Middle School with the beautiful garden they intended so we did our best to clean up the area. We gained a sense of community within our group as well as appreciation for the environment we are capable of making beautiful again. It was rewarding to see all our hard work be shown through the visual of our garden. The pictures we have (included in the presentation) show how the efforts Northeast Middle School students put into making the once beautiful garden presentable. Shown are clothes hanger butterflies, signs, and intentionally gardened plants such as tomatoes and vines to surround the garden. We noticed that they became overgrown and unmaintained, allowing invasive plants and animals to overbear the existing plants. We did our best to first cut down all the overgrown plants to the roots in order to best clean out the area. We continued that for 4 hours of our service hours. We then attempted to pull out and cut the weeds and vines we could for another 3 hours. The last thing we did was pour weed killer on the existing roots and rake what was left. We were left with an empty garden ready for the planting of soil and new plants. We will take with us the feeling of accomplishment and move forward implementing it into our daily lives. The plants we have in our daily lives will now be looked at with more care and affection than before and we encourage others to do the same in honor of the work at Northeast Middle school.

We researched Land Degradation– Land Degradation effects the environment greatly. Land Degradation is the decline in the quality of land due to natural processes and human activity. It has been a concern for thousands of years. The scale of degradation has increased dramatically since the industrial revolution, due to urbanization, industrial agriculture, mining, and climate change. Possible SDG’s include:

Life on land– restoring degraded land and soil to achieve a land degradation-neutral world by 2030

Clean water and sanitation– degradation affects water quality and availability by disrupting watersheds and increasing sedimentation