Moving Forward - Great Lakes Landscape Design and Donations!

I'm so pleased to announce that Ivan Katz and the team at Great Lakes Landscape Design, Inc. will be working with us to design the WBHS Literary Garden! Today Ivan came out to discuss his vision for the space, and he took measurements and configured how much material we would need. My next step is to secure donations of pea gravel, compost, soil, and stone for the garden. I'm also going to need lots of volunteers with wheelbarrows once the garden materials arrive! Many thanks to Ivan for his generous contributions of time and expertise - I am looking forward to working with Great Lakes Landscape Design Inc.!

Ivan hard at work!

I also want to express my deep gratitude for your donations - we have raised over $800 for the garden since May! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generosity!

If you would still like to donate, you can access the West Bloomfield High School homepage here.

LITERARY GARDEN ONLINE DONATIONS GO LIVE TODAY!

I am delighted to announce that donations for the Literary Garden can now be made online on the West Bloomfield High School homepage:http://wbsd.schoolwires.net/Domain/8

You will see an announcement at the top of the page for the Literary Garden donations. 

Instructions can be found here: http://wbsd.schoolwires.net/Page/6448

Please contact me with any questions here.

THE RAVEN THANKS YOU FOR YOUR DONATION!

Compost Pile, Dirt, and Online Donations

The Earth Club has taken the sod and created a compost pile for us!

We had more sod than we needed, so that will be mulched and used to fill the bottom of the garden.

I have discovered that Angelo's in Wixom offers free fill dirt if we pick it up, so I'll be brainstorming a way to make that happen in the next few weeks! I have also applied for another grant through one of my former students. Fingers crossed! If we can use fill dirt to raise the bed, that will save us costs on topsoil.

The district is behind our project 100% and plans to have an online donation platform set up by next Friday, June 12. You can bet that I will be posting that information as soon as I have it!

Thanks to all of you who have offered your time and money to help make this garden a reality - I am humbled by your generosity and support.

Additional Authors on Board!

KURT VONNEGUT - Slaughterhouse-Five

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library is working to procure some hydrangeas from Vonnegut's house as pictured here, and founder and executive director Julia Whitehead has been extraordinarily encouraging of our project. Thank you, Julia!

EDGAR ALLAN POE - "The Raven," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Annabel Lee," "Hop-Frog," "The Tell-Tale Heart" and more

Many thanks to Hal Poe, Chris Semtner, and The Museum of Edgar Allan Poe in Richmond, Virginia for working with us! We are looking forward to ivy from Poe's mother's grave as well as other plants to be determined, as the house has extensive gardens in honor of Poe.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE  - "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil"












The generous folks at The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts have already set aside lemon balm from Sophia Hawthorne's kitchen garden. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about the lilac bush outside his window in "Buds and Bird-voices" - we will also be receiving a cutting from that bush. In addition, we hope to receive some of the perennials that surround the house. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Hawthornes both lived there for a time, and Henry David Thoreau planted a vegetable garden there for the newlywed Hawthornes.

We have so much work ahead of us! The WBHS Earth Club is working on a compost pile for the sod we tore out, and we have already received offers of donations of both time and money. Thank you all for your support and generosity of spirit!

GROUNDBREAKING!

On Monday, May 18th, we broke ground on the Literary Garden at West Bloomfield High School. I raced around before we cut into the sod, taking last minute pictures, wanting to document this entire process. Here is the area with which we began:

I could not have broken ground without the assistance of Matt Zimmerman, WBHS Class of 2005, and Scott Payne, WBHS Class of 1977.  Matt took the time out of his day to rent a sod cutter to make the process easier, and he and Scott brought shovels and rakes. Now if we had only remembered to bring a wheelbarrow...

Ready to roll!

 Breaking ground...

Rolling up turf like sushi rolls!

Sod ready for the compost bin (on order from the Earth Club) - we carried all of it by hand!

We also had a visit from the resident mama duck and her babies; they hatched in the courtyard this spring and have toddled around to the delight of both students and staff. Once we rolled up the sod, we uncovered all kinds of grubs and bugs for the ducklings to chase down and eat. By the end of the night, we were tired, sweaty, and sore, but the ducks feasted like kings!

The area is prepped and ready for fill dirt and topsoil. As we have spent our "seed" grant money from the West Bloomfield Educational Foundation, we are actively soliciting donations of money, fill dirt, or topsoil to move into the next phase of our garden. The plants will arrive in the fall, and I'll post again later this week to share some exciting news about additional author partnerships we have forged - I am so excited!!!

I also need to thank my dear Uncle Jimmy Peterson. He makes wooden birds for gardens as a hobby, and when I asked him to make a raven for our garden, he got right to work. Thanks, Uncle Jimmy!

Now the raven stands sentinel over the garden, waiting patiently for the next phase to begin!

Please contact me here if you would like to contribute in some way to our garden.

Starting from Scratch...

Next week we anticipate breaking ground on the garden (fingers crossed that the weather holds out!)

This is the courtyard in the center of West Bloomfield High School.

As you can see, the courtyard is desperately in need of an upgrade.

We will begin the garden around the red "pod" classroom and expand as space and funds allow.

We have already purchased and procured the mulch!










Stay tuned for a second author update!

Which Authors Will Be Represented in the Literary Garden?

While donations of plants or seedlings have not been finalized, here are the authors we hope to have represented in the Walden at West Bloomfield Literary Garden:

BRONSON AND LOUISA MAY ALCOTT - Little Women
We are working with the Alcott Orchard House to find local varieties of the apple trees Bronson Alcott so prized as the originals have all died out. Please see the Bronson and Louisa May Alcott Orchard House for more information on Bronson Alcott's passion for apple trees.

WALT WHITMAN - "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
In honor of Uncle Walt's famous poem, we are hoping to get a cutting of the lilac bush at the Walt Whitman Museum in New York. Many thanks to the Walt Whitman Museum for their assistance in this endeavor! You can read Uncle Walt's poem here.

KEN KESEY - One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
Zane Kesey, Ken's son, reports that Ken found bleeding hearts to be "magical" and also asked that we plant forget-me-nots in his honor.

F.SCOTT AND ZELDA FITZGERALD - The Great Gatsby

The F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Alabama is hoping to provide us with magnolia cones in the fall from a tree that was only a sapling when the Fitzgeralds lived there! We are so grateful for their generous offer.

I will know more tomorrow about five more authors' representatives that have expressed interest in contributing to our project:

KURT VONNEGUT - Slaughterhouse-Five
HENRY DAVID THOREAU - Walden
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE - "Buds and Bird-voices," "Young Goodman Brown," "The Minister's Black Veil"
MARK TWAIN - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
EDGAR ALLAN POE - "The Raven" and many other short stories

Another update will be posted soon! Please contact me here for more information or to contribute to the Walden at West Bloomfield Literary Garden.