The birds are singing, the butterflies are fluttering, and the bees are buzzing because the Westlake High School Pride Lands Native Plant Garden has been completed!  The garden was planted with an exquisite ensemble of spring and fall colors from 7 types of Georgia native plants; Eastern Bluestar-Amsonia taberneamontana a gentle light blue-grey, Mouse-eared Coreopsis-Coreopsis auriculata, projecting brilliant orange-yellow, Wild Blue Indigo-Baptisia australis emitting it’s true color by name, Blazing star-Liatris squarrosa showing a deep purple, Black-eyed-Susan-Rudbeckia fulgida adding to the yellow ensemble, Aromatic Aster-Aster oblongifolius with a hue of blue, Joe Pye Weed-Eupatorium atropurpureum as a plume of soft pinkish-purple.

As the day remained blue sky and sunlit, we continued to arrange plants according to the student’s garden design.  Collectively, the Earth Tomorrow club and EcoAddendum team installed 167 individual native plants.  It was amazing to see the blank earth in only an hour and a half transform to a beautiful sea of wildlife habitat.  The students ended the planting day by installing a birdbath to help meet the five criteria to become a National Wildlife Federation Certified Wildlife Habitat.  Thank you to all WHS Earth Tomorrow Club members for all their hard work and creative edge to create such an exquisite garden for all future visitors to experience.

Ecoaddendum is proud to announce the date for the Westlake High School’s Pride Lands Garden Dedication on Thursday May 13^th, 2010 at 4:30pm located at the southside greenspace near bus entrance and exit. The dedication will include speeches by members of Earth Tomorrow Club, a plaque presentation and ribbon cutting. We look forward to see you all there!

Enveloped and encouraged by bountiful sunshine and moderate temperatures, the excited members of Westlake High School’s Earth Tomorrow Club broke ground on their 500 square foot Pride Lands garden located on the south side of campus.  The day’s activities included amending the soil within the perimeter of the space and developing the layout and design of the new garden.  Bird Butterfly and Bee Coordinator Lauren Sandoval, our Nursery Manager Hilary Nichols, and I began by giving the attentive students a short lecture on the safety and handling of the required tools.  We separated into two groups: one would design the garden’s layout and the other would begin amending the soil.  Soil amendment is the addition of organic material to enrich the existing soil that may have not been suitable for required growing conditions for specific types of plants.  In this case, we mixed in a truckload of compost to loosen and prepare the soil to receive the types of native plants going into the garden.   With the Georgia sun shining down on us, we took our time during water breaks to revel in our progress and thoroughly enjoy the beautiful day.

When arranging native plants in a garden, it is important to know that the selection of plants is based on the conditions of the soil moisture content and amount of light in a day’s time. Throughout the day, the students began to understand this fundamental need to assimilate the plants into the garden according to their specific conditions.  Eager to construct and complete the design, the students came up with two practical models of how they would like their Pride Lands garden to look.

At the end of the hour, all the soil amending and garden designing came together. Each student walked away with the enjoyment of the day’s activities and a sense of pride at what they just achieved together. Next week, our outdoor work will continue with the Pride Lands Planting!  We are excited for another successful day of working outside andgetting our hands dirty.

It was a cold February day outside, but, inside the walls of Westlake High School (WHS), thoughts were in full bloom about native plants and pollinators.  The student members of the WHS Earth Tomorrow Club teamed up in groups of three and began their “Plants with a Purpose” research on native plants.  They answered such questions as: “What kind of conditions do native plants thrive in?” and “what wildlife and pollinators do the native plants support?”

The students did an excellent job asking essential questions and working together to further their knowledge about the native plants they will soon be planting in their garden.

Sarah Collman, EcoAddendum’s Artscapes Program Educator,    helped the students to use their newly discovered knowledge of native plants to create observation inspired relief prints.  Some students were interested in native plant images, while others used images of insects and pollinators.

The students were excited to learn this new process and create their own works of art.  It was an afternoon filled with native plant education, paint, and smiles. Thanks to all the Earth Tomorrow Club members and Mr. Hoge, the club sponsor, for all their hard work during this activity.

By: Lauren Sandoval

Photographer: Cecilia Marrero

He invented the cotton gin.

They were Christians but committed the biggest sin.

He worked the land from dawn till dusk.

They beat him; They beat him, and treated him brusque.

He cleared the land of trees and bees.

He picked and picked, from that one tree,

From dawn till dusk he worked like buzzing bees

They died and died like it was the fall season.

He replaced them, and planted more; money was the reason.

He crossed the ocean; the land he seizes.

They destroyed the native&plants with the exchange of disease.

He filled the land with a tree.

He caused the butterflies and birds to flee,

From They; free he wanted to be.

I live here now and I have a new vision

To bring the native plants back; today’s a new season

I’ll work the land from dawn till dark.

I plant and plant and leave my mark.

Until the day; when they shall see,

The beauty of the land with birds, butterflies, and bees.

By: Dan Louis

Earth Tomorrow President

Westlake High School

Class of 2010

EcoAddendum and its Birds, Butterflies, and Bees Program (BBB) is proud to announce its newest partnership with Westlake High School’s Earth Tomorrow Club. The mission of the Earth Tomorrow Club is to promote environmental wellness.   Through their community service, environmental projects, and leadership, they strive to stifle the problems plaguing the environment and to raise awareness about those problems.   By bettering their world, they are creating a brighter environmental future and a healthier “Earth Tomorrow.”

In August of 2008, the doors were opened to the newly constructed Westlake High School located at 2400 Union Road SW Atlanta, GA 30331 housing over 2,300 high school students in 99 classrooms.   The new high school is a great opportunity for the children of Southwest Fulton County, but for the wildlife in the area it was a clearing of vital habitat and vegetation.  The Earth Tomorrow Club saw this as an opportunity to not only create a legacy garden and make their new campus greener but to also give back to the landscape some of what was cleared and educate the students about the sustainability and diversity of native plants.

Together the Earth Tomorrow Club and EcoAddendum are drawing up plans for the  500 sq. ft. garden, selecting native plants, working on the cultivation of funds, and developing a time line for invasive removal and planting.

by Pandra Williams

Photos by Cecilia Marrero

Over the past two years, the Hurt Park Native Plant Garden has survived a year of drought, student foot traffic, and a direct hit from a tornado.  The erosion, once problematic, is under control where the garden bed has been installed.  Many of these perennial plants are now mature, and will continue to fill out and put up additional bloom stalks in the years to come.   We have collected seeds from the garden as they ripen for propagation purposes, as well as to make native seed packets.

A tornado in March 2008 hit the newly installed native plant bed.

Mid summer 2009 in Hurt Park

A view of the center flower bed from mid July. Black eyed susan, Rudbeckia fulgida, Brown eyed susan, Rudbeckia triloba,

Purple coneflwer, Echinacea purpurea, and Stokes aster, Stokesia laevis.

Above: Butterfly Weed,  Asclepias tuberosa, with a honeybee.  This is a host plant for the Monarch butterfly.

Left: Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, the same echinacea plant used in herbal cold remedies.  Coneflowers will re-bloom if the past prime flower stalks are cut back.  This plant is the host for the Silvery Checkerspot Butterfly.  In our nursery, later in the summer, we saw goldfinches feasting on the seeds of this plant.

Right: Bluestar, Amsonia tabernaemontana. Pale turquoise, star shaped flowers.A beautiful perennial,not used in the garden nearly enough, Bluestar is the host plant for the Coral Hairstreak butterfly, Satyrium titus.  More information can be had at:   Butterflies And Moths Of North America and Georgia Wildlife Federation.

Right below: Giant Blue Hyssop, Agastache scrophularifoliae with Red Beebalm, Monarda didyma.

Hammonds House Museum, West End, Atlanta

Phase I:

First Phase of the Hammonds House Museum “garden greening” will be a Native Plant Sanctuary Garden at the back, or third tier, of the Hammonds House Museum property, with the intent to create a peaceful natural environment for meditation and communing with nature. An additional purpose of the Native Plant Sanctuary at Hammonds House Museum is to provide an aesthetically appealing and educational garden space composed of native plants and shrubs.   This tranquil green space will expose the thousands of visitors, who frequent the Hammonds House Museum through museum visitation, programs offered and facility rental to the  benefits of native plants, what they do for us, as well as the historical cultural and pharmacological uses of the plant species. Educational benefits also include identification of species, symbiotic support of the ecosystem and environmental conservation and what they do for the birds, butterflies and pollinators. These plants will serve to re establish our ecological connectivity.

EcoAddendum, a non-profit organization, has developed the BBB program as an outreach of its mission to return native plants to the landscape by promoting the use of local species in public and private gardens and greenspaces.  This program also supports the recovery of natural environment space by creating schoolyard and backyard habitats. The BBB process facilitates the installation of wildlife-friendly native plant installations in public schools and greenspaces that may find themselves strapped for funding by creating an easily used and adaptable microfunding approach.

EcoAddendum designs and installs public and private plantings that are both attractive for humans and beneficial to birds, pollinators, and other wildlife. As we are non-profit, these services are provided at near cost, any revenues going toward the perpetuation of our stated goals. We also give educational programs on how and why to plant native species and promote volunteer participation in their planting and maintenance. We are co-operating with Atlanta Audubon, the U.S. Forest Service, and other organizations in the National Wildlife Federation sponsored Flyway Cities Coalition, a nationwide effort to promote activities beneficial to migratory birds passing through urban areas.

MLK Workday at the OAC

The Outdoor Activity Center (OAC) has a long term vision of restoring their 26 acre forest and grounds to a healthy, native plant community.

Working together for the past eighteen months, the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA), EcoAddendum, Park Pride, Trees Atlanta, West Atlanta Mountain Bike Association and many
volunteers,  removed invasive species from the garden site and its immediate surroundings during regular and intensive volunteer workdays.  The Atlanta Botanical Garden donated two
large truckloads of organic compost to topdress this project.  EcoAddendum has developed a garden plan and native plant list for the butterfly garden site.  Although the entire OAC grounds comprise 26 acres, the first efforts are being concentrated on the eighteen by thirty five foot butterfly garden.

Planting species native to the Georgia piedmont region recreates the foundation of the local food web and ecosystem that has been lost over the past two hundred years ago due to poor land management practices.  Reintroducing these environmental building blocks creates a sustaining base that supports missing insects, butterflies, pollinators, birds and other animals.  This, in turn, creates an outdoor classroom for environmental journaling, science observation, and collaborative art projects.

These projects expose our local youth and community to native plants, the species they support, and the local ecotone and food web, things that they may not see otherwise in urban Atlanta.  Programming and related activities develop a deeper appreciation and understanding of Atlanta’s urban forest and meadow, and ultimately foster stewardship.

The West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA) and EcoAddendum have developed an environmental experiential after school program for the youth of Southwest Atlanta which is scheduled to debut March 2009.  The activities include orienteering, hiking, journaling and environmentally based art projects.  The native plant garden is an important element of this program and deepens the experiential aspect of all the planned activities.  Active documented use of the garden during the OAC’s Junior Naturalist program through journaling, drawing projects, and other related stewardship and gardening activities create a measurable outcome for this garden.