Botany Students Dig Gardening

Wielding shovels, rakes, saws, and axes, a gang of botany students massed behind the Headmaster’s residence and began to put their plan into action. Their target was an overgrown and slightly unkempt patch of ground between the north side of Pulling House and adjacent to the Miller Brown Health Center. In short order, the space would be transformed.

 

Leigh Schmitt’s botany master class edged new beds, pruned trees, and did an overall cleanout as a part of a landscape design and installation project featuring Headmaster Drew Casertano as client. Before digging in, student landscapers heard from Headmaster Casertano about campus history and the master plan for Millbrook’s future.

 

Environmental stewardship is a foundational element of a Millbrook education. This exercise in landscape architecture and design allowed students to get outdoors and to commune with the land. Perennials were sourced from the Farm in an effort to increase plant biodiversity and to create a sustainable agronomy in the yard. Yarrow, purple coneflower, ox-eyed daisies, and lilies are beautiful indigenous plants that should thrive in the sunlight regained after the removal of an unhealthy spruce tree.

 

Planting a garden is an inherently hopeful act. Mr. Schmitt’s V and VI form botany students have had a positive impact on the campus, just as the campus has positively impacted them.