school garden plan

here is an illustrative of the site we are slaving away at day after day. if you are standing on the school balcony looking out this is what you will see in just two more weeks. supposedly. minus the mature trees and shrubs of course. what you can see now looks like a complete disaster. this whole process is moving at breakneck speed and i have to admit that i can hardly believe we will complete the transformation by the end of february.

in case the painting is hard to understand i will explain it a bit. the theater/stage/deck is located in the upper left-hand corner. it faces steps that we built into the corner of the site. this area is called the peace plaza and will have tiles installed into the steps that list the twelve values of the peace curriculum the school is teaching. (respect, love, truth, etc.) along the back wall are a series of plant beds, benches and a water feature with a runnel. the hedge of plants beside the fountain separates the bottom of the driveway from the garden. there are more beds in the middle of the site, including a sunken garden with a small arched stone bridge over it.

in the bottom right-hand corner there is a smaller space that centers around a table with a planter in the middle. behind it, a wrought iron screen that will be built by a local iron-smith hides the driveway from view. this area is next to the school library and is the shadiest spot on site. it is built on top of a cistern and so we are using planters and pots instead of digging out more beds.

we are using rebar for different artistic and functional purposes. the main installation is a rebar "tree" that will go in the bed next to the sunken garden. we will plant vines to grow up around it. we are also putting low rebar fencing around the beds to discourage the kids from trampling the plants to death (which could happen in mere minutes). the fence will be made of a repeating pattern of rebar pieces bent into whimsical shapes. of course the plan has changed many times over the past three weeks so nothing (except the 500 some bags of poured concrete) is for sure until it's built.