SETH BOYDEN EARNS $10,000 STATE GRANT

From the school district:  


Seth Boyden has become one of 11 schools and/or districts in the state to be awarded a $10,000 grant through Sustainable Jersey’s first round of school grants for the year. The grants were funded by the New Jersey Education Association and checks were presented at a brunch and ceremony on Thursday in Trenton.

The money will fund Story Trails and new planting in the school’s Habitat Garden, a mostly wild area in the school’s back yard devoted to plants and trees native to New Jersey. The story trails will be designed to lead students on walks of discovery through the garden, helping them learn to identify species in the garden, as well as to discover the animals and insects that call the patch home. Planner hope members of the community will use the garden as well.

Thanks to the grant, work on the Habitat Garden will begin in spring at the same time the school plans to begin construction of its outdoor classroom. The garden will be adjacent to the classroom, and the trails will lead into it from an art circle that will be part of the classroom design.

“I am looking forward to another exciting project!,’’ Matthias Ebinger, co-chair of the Outdoor Learning Center and the man who spearheaded the grant proposal, told the PTA leadership on hearing the news.

He was equally grateful to both Sustainable Jersey and NJEA for making it happen. Last spring, the school got a $2,000 grant through Sustainable Jersey that was used to create a green team at the school and to make better signage in the garden.

“We are grateful not only because the money helps make New Jersey greener,’’ said Tia Swanson, the co-chair of the OLC, who picked up the check in Trenton,  “But because it also makes our school look more like the place where we all want to send our children.”

The work is part of a comprehensive plan to turn Seth Boyden’s large backyard into an Outdoor Learning Center. Teaching gardens and a small orchard have long been in use and an outdoor kitchen was added earlier this fall; a drip irrigation system, funded by the Maplewood Green Team, will be installed in early spring; after the classroom and the Habitat Garden are finished, the PTA and the school will turn its attention to turning the back yard into an arboretum, hopefully recreating what the land might have looked like at the time of the country’s founding.

“It’s all awesome and amazing,’’ said PTA Co-President Amelia Nickles Riekenberg.