Preschool Garden Delights Our Youngsters

Our youngest students at Caraway now have their very own butterfly-hummingbird habitat, thanks to a very dedicated group of Girl Scouts working on their Bronze Award, as well as wonderful contributions from the community.

The lovely hardscaping was funded by part of our Home Depot Building Healthy Communities Grant, allowing us to create a very special outdoor learning area for our youngest students. In addition, the marvelous ThunderDirt was contributed by GeoGrowers, and the native plants were donated by the Wildflower Center. Thank you so much to these superb businesses and organizations — our children will grow in so many ways along with their new garden! We love how the grounds around Caraway are becoming more beautiful AND educational — and the wildlife will be grateful, too!

The Girl Scouts spent many hours planning and designing the project, measuring and calculating needed materials, digging through some very tough dirt, hauling heavy wheelbarrows around, laying pavers and blocks, shoveling soil and sand and granite, planting plants, and assembling benches. What a tremendous project they undertook, and the results are so impressive!

The curved garden has a diverse collection of touch-friendly native plants that will attract wildlife to the children’s garden.

And the butterfly benches are a favorite of so many of our Caraway students, families, and staff. They are resting on a new “patio” of pavers that was no easy task to place! In the spring, the Girl Scouts will be adding new planters and a hummingbird station to create a little haven alongside the benches.

We so much appreciate the hard work of this fantastic group of Scouts.

Our preschoolers excitedly watched the progress during the few weeks of the project, and now they are enjoying working in their very own garden, tending the new plants. A few even got to help with the creation of the garden by moving decomposed granite into the pathway, one trowel-ful at a time (with some bigger help from the Scouts and the Green Team).

Right now the plants are very small, which unfortunately makes them a little attractive to neighborhood deer looking for fall munchies — this is the time of year that deer sample plants that normally wouldn’t appeal to them. But don’t worry, the plants that survive will become a beautiful garden in the spring — and we’ll replace anything we need to at that time, when the deer are busy looking for tastier new growth elsewhere.

We love the new garden — thank you Girl Scouts, Home Depot, GeoGrowers, Wildflower Center, and all the volunteers who helped along the way!

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Eagle Scout Creates Natural Trails

We are thrilled to be able to invite you to take a stroll along the new natural trails through our never-before-been-used woodlands at the front of Caraway. Ben Koons, a former Caraway student, along with his team of volunteers, took on for his Eagle Scout project the massive tasks of creating natural pathways, cleaning out trash, and removing invasive plants to give our school a brand new outdoor learning area, while still keeping the woodlands a very intact native habitat.

The trail has four access points, with two right near the front of the school. There’s even a clearing with large boulders that students can use for seats as they listen to birds and study nature.

The project took two weekends of hard work. As part of the habitat project, Ben’s team worked hard to removed invasive non-native plants from the woodlands, including 4 Ligustrum trees…

More than 20 Nandina shrubs…

And vines and vines of Japanese honeysuckle.

(That’s our very own Mr. Fowler working hard to get out all the root systems of those terribly invasive vines.)

The removal of the Japanese honeysuckle and other invasives means that our native plants — like American Beautyberry, a fantastic wildlife plant — have a chance to survive and thrive.

So take a stroll through our front woodlands, and observe our native plants and the wildlife they support. Can you identify Yaupons? Cedar Elms? Wafer Ash? Bur and Live Oaks? Ashe Juniper? Can you find any mushrooms (don’t eat them!) and animal burrows? What wildlife can you spot? Be sure to stay on the trails to protect our habitat!

Thank you so much, Ben and all your crew, for such a fantastic gift that will benefit Caraway students AND wildlife for years and years to come!

By the way, we are working on new educational signs for both our woodland areas, along with plans to increase the native diversity with new plants and seeds to be planted by our students this October!

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We are an official Demonstration Site!

Yesterday, Earth Day, was a tremendous one for our school and students. During our afternoon ceremony, our third- and fourth-graders got to present their 3-D Legacy of Giving habitat murals to community members from around the city, including National Wildlife Federation, Wild Basin Preserve, Wildflower Center, Spicewood Springs Library, Austin Nature & Science Center, Representative Mark Strama, RRISD Superintendent Jesús Chavez, Texas Education Agency, and Austin Children’s Museum. It was an amazing presentation, and cheers could probably be heard throughout the whole school. The recipients were thrilled, and our students’ habitat murals will get to teach others all over Austin and the state of Texas about creating wildlife habitats at home through the use of native plants!

Also visiting our school were representatives from Texas Parks and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Legacy of Giving, RRISD Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education Beverly Helfinstein and reporters from News 8 Austin and Round Rock Leader. Yes, we were on the news last night!

We have many exciting announcements. First, National Wildlife Federation’s Meg Haenn was on hand to official recognize our school as a Certified Wildlife Habitat, and Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Mark Klym declared our school a Texas Wildscapes Schoolyard Habitat Demonstration Site. This is an important and special honor reserved for places that exhibit habitat restoration and conservation, providing the necessary elements for wildlife and contributing to biodiversity of native animal and plant species. We are proud to have our new signs already on display at our Outdoor Wildlife Lab. Please stop by and see them! And be sure to thank Mrs. Conti, our art teacher for the beautiful painting she did for our Outdoor Wildlife Lab sign, seen above.

We also officially announced that we are proud recipients of two environmental grants. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program has given us a wonderful reimbursement fund of up to $7,500 on money raised and spent toward our environmental goals! In addition, we are thrilled to be Home Depot 2010 Building Healthy Communities grant recipients for $2,500! It means we’ve got to get busy on our next eco projects, including our new rain collection system! We are very grateful to both Partners for Fish and Wildlife and Home Depot for their support of our school’s environmental goals.

If that all wasn’t exciting enough, we were invited to another special event for Earth Day. In the evening, McNeil High School’s Green Club honored several elementary schools for their contributions to energy conservation through the Watt Watchers program. Caraway wasn’t one of the top three, but we did receive an honorable mention for our energy conservation (thank you to Deborah Walker and her Watt Watchers for their hard work at getting us to turn our lights out!), and we received special recognition for our habitat, giving us the very first POWER Environmental Award — Protecting Our World’s Energy and Resources. Thank you so much, McNeil Green Club!

It was an exciting day for our students, without a doubt. The Caraway Earth Day ceremony was tremendously special, and we want to thank all of our dignitaries for spending their afternoon with us. It did rain, bringing our ceremony indoors, but the rain was a gift for our garden on Earth Day. Remember, Every Day Is Earth Day — so reduce, reuse, recycle, conserve water, go native, and go green — every day!

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Earth Day Habitat Dedication

Today is Earth Day, a day people take extra care of the environment and truly appreciate Earth. For our students this year, Earth Day also represents the culmination of our school’s focus on wildlife habitats and the creation of our new Outdoor Wildlife Lab. We will be presenting our Legacy of Giving murals to their recipients, and we will have special recognition from National Wildlife Federation and Texas Parks and Wildife! If you can make it, our ceremony begins promptly at 1:45, and we recommend arriving early and parking on the street rather than in our drive. A very exciting day for Caraway!

P.S. Do you see the rogue bluebonnet that has made its home in front of our sign? It didn’t want to miss our special day!

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Legacy of Giving Habitat Projects

The third- and fourth-graders at Caraway have been working hard on their Legacy of Giving projects. They are creating displays about making wildlife habitats here in Austin, and they will share these with the community. Look at some of the cool creatures and plants that have been made for the boards so far…

Once they are all finished, the boards will be on display at school for awhile before they go out into the community. Superb work, everyone!

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What is a Wildlife Habitat?

Many Caraway students are already learning all about wildlife habitats, places that provide all the elements that animals need to live. Many natural habitats have been lost as cities grow, and animals need our help to survive!

What are the elements of a wildlife habitat?

Provide food. Native flowers, grasses, shrubs, trees, vines, and other plants can provide nectar, pollen, berries, seeds, nuts, or leaves that animals need. If you like butterflies, be sure to provide a plant that’s a larval host to caterpillars! You can also use birdfeeders.

Supply water. Animals need clean water sources, such as shallow bird baths, saucers, puddling areas for butterflies, ponds, or rain gardens.

Create cover. Give animals a place to hide from predators and bad weather. Native trees and shrubs, brush piles, rock piles, and even dead trees (called snags) all provide cover for small birds, lizards, and other small animals. A broken pot, upside-down, can even be a small house for a toad!

Provide places to raise young. Many of the places that provide cover can also provide places to raise young. Did you know that understory trees and shrubs are very important for fledgling birds  trying to learn to fly? Caterpillars sometimes crawl to grasses and bushes to make their chrysalis, and toads and frogs need water sources such as ponds. And of course, you can make birdhouses and bee boxes to give other wildlife a place to lay their eggs.

Go green! The health of soil, plants, air, and water has a direct effect on the health of native wildlife, as well as on humans. Aim for sustainable gardening — reduce chemical use, use mulch and compost, plant native plants that are water-wise, and reduce your lawn — all great ways to be eco-friendly!

Caraway’s new garden will have all the elements of a wildlife habitat, including caterpillar host plants, small saucers of water, nectar-providing flowers, shrubs and grasses, organic soil, and more.

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