$15,000 Verizon grant helps fund Colonial Hill's garden cistern and solar-powered pumps

The $15,000 grant from Verizon will fund the addition of a system that will harvest rainwater from the school's rooftop, to include a 5,000 gallon cistern with a solar pump attached to a downspout to feed a drip line irrigation system.

The community garden at Colonial Hills Elementary School isn't your basic campus garden, it is an outdoor classroom in which every grade level learns the value of healthy living, healthy choices and teamwork.

The Verizon grant, combined with other grants, has fed a four-year dream to have a garden that involves every grade level and offers lessons in plant science, ecology, water conservation, art, music, math, technology engeering and creative writing.

Colonial Hills Coach Terri Pitts started the grant-writing process, and with the district's grant department, nurtured it into an award-winning grant.

"This past fall, we had produce go from the garden to the cafeteria," Pitts said. "We made coleslaw. The students picked carrots and cabbage and delivered them to the cafeteria staff."

Students who nornally do not like vegetables were willing to try the coleslaw because it grew in the school garden," she said.

First-graders sowed a variety of tomatoes, second-graders planted lettuce, third-graders added vegetables, fourth-graders planted herbs, spinach and broccoli and fifth-graders planted herbs and broccoli, and special education students contributed cucumbers and flowers.

The Verizon will enhance the twelve  4x8 raised garden beds and the two 4x2 table garden beds. The garden also has a cedar garden toolshed with stepping stones leading to the shed. The beds are protected by a cast-iron fence.

"Students learn about sharing and teamwork as well as the interconnected web of llife," Pitts said. "Gardening gives our school a way of helping students idenify with their school and to feel proud of their own individual contribution."