It’s been 14 years since “Blooming Heights,” the little kitchen garden tucked inside the horseshoe formed by the back side of Columbia Heights High School, was first planted. Time for a refresh.
Seniors in Aimee Candella’s science class were tasked with redesigning the garden as their senior project. Their goal was to incorporate water-saving, energy-saving and pollinator-friendly structures to make the garden/classroom more sustainable.
The students worked in teams.
Omar Muse, Aldo Manzanarez and Ismail Osman envisioned the garden not only as a food source, but as a play area. Their design included benches for kids to sit and climb on. A shed used to store garden implements would be refitted with solar panels for lighting and a living roof to keep it cool.
Yomaira Cazho, Andrea Robles and Alison Cuzco incorporated many native flowers in their design. They wanted to make their garden “more natural and more healthy” by using plants to encourage pollinators. They added a tree trench to nurture apple trees. Native grasses would surround a rain garden.
Kimberly Rodriguez, Allison Giles and Evelin Rojas had a strawberry theme for their garden. “Fresita” featured a strawberry garden because “we love strawberries.” Their version of Blooming Heights would include awnings to provide shade for people and some plants. A picnic area would have a roof over it, with one side cooled by a living roof and the other painted with strawberries. Compost and recycling bins would be placed nearby to encourage younger students to take proper care of the garden.
Yadislay Lopez Ursua and Diego Paucar-Deleg used Google maps to get an aerial view of their garden, which included a shaded canopy over a learning center attached to the school building. Like several other student renditions of the garden, they would add a cistern to capture rainwater for use in watering the plants.
Paths made with permeable pavers were another common feature of the students’ designs. Tenzin Norbu and Tiffany Romero included the pavers in their design, not only to lead visitors through the garden, but to help control water runoff. They also allocated a large space to a rain garden.
Naatii Ahmed and Nawal Mohamed’s garden includes a little classroom building made with stained glass repurposed from church windows. They would use plants such as lavender, mint and rosemary to deter food-eating insects. Their rain garden also would have a solar-powered aerator and a swing set.
Leo Pham, Katelynn Hackett, and Genevieve DuRose went all-out to create a “beacon of sustainability.” Noting that the garden sits atop a hill, they placed their rain garden at the bottom of it. Instead of a cistern to catch water, they would use a system of blue barrels obtained from the food industry. (The barrels cannot be reused for food.) The barrels would be moveable and could be used in different locations the site. The students used the Minecraft video game to design their garden, eliminating the one-time use of plastics and other hard-to-recycle materials.
Leo Cedeno and Franklin Chaguan took a different approach to water management in their garden. Instead of a cistern, they would use a series of gutters attached to the school building to catch rainwater and direct it to an underground storage tank. The tank would connect to sprinklers stationed around the garden. They would make smaller raised beds to encourage more diversity in vegetable crops.
Natesha Ahmed, Traveena Williams and Larisa Kadric said the living roof over their garden bench would provide exterior insulation against the heat and reduce stormwater runoff. They would put solar panels on the garden shed to power its lights.
Citlaly Manzano, Mohamed Omer, Bilal Omar and Stephanie Romero Penaloza put “a lot of thinking” into their project. They wanted a garden that’s a beauty spot as well as a place for kids to enjoy. Their design included tree trenches, a rain garden and a water tower.
Candella said in an email to the Northeaster, “The students are part of an Anoka Ramsey Community College class that is taught in the high school focused on environmental science. For their culminating project, they need to take on a community project in order to reimagine it in a more sustainable way … Over the course of the year they learn about sustainable agriculture, land management, forestry, and green building techniques as well as wastewater treatment. With the project they get to apply all of the different concepts they have learned to change the world.”
She said before the COVID pandemic, the school worked with the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization on its projects. “After COVID, we had to choose projects more by word-of-mouth, and after talking to the garden specialist, Melissa Trent, we decided to reimagine our own Blooming Heights in a way that would be both educational and sustainable.
“My hope is they will start seeing ways in their everyday life they can affect change and do good.”
Allison Giles points out the living roof on the high school, which could lower heating and cooling costs. (Cynthia Sowden)
Franklin Chaguan, right, explains how water would flow from the school building to an underground storage tank. He and Leo Cedeno teamed up to design their version of the garden. (Cynthia Sowden)
Leo Pham stands next to a design their team created in the Minecraft video game as a way to produce their garden model sustainably.(Cynthia Sowden)