Siler City Elementary garden wins award and is Monarch butterfly habitat

Posted Tuesday, September 15, 2009

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Siler City, NC - The Siler City Elementary Garden Project has been awarded a Chocolate for Good kit from Dagoba Organic Chocolate. Dagoba had an overwhelming response to its call for submissions and found the Siler City Elementary project to be an especially innovative approach to creating a greener and more sustainable future. The kit contains Dagoba Organic chocolate bars for parent volunteers, 25 packets of lavender seeds, and garden tools, hats and gloves.

Monarch Watch has also approved the garden as a Monarch butterfly waystation. Monarch waystations provide milkweeds, nectar plants, and shelter for monarchs throughout their annual cycle of reproduction and migration. The students will tag Monarchs and check online to see if they make it to their historic overwintering sites in the high mountains of Michoacan, Mexico.

The Siler City Elementary School garden project strives to involve students and parents in home and school gardening to improve both health and food budgets. Students are involved in science and literary links in the garden. Beds include Peter Rabbit, Jack in the Beanstalk, the Monarch butterfly, salad, pizza, herbs and North Carolina native crops. Fresh lettuce and spinach from the garden were served in school cafeteria last spring. The social work department gave away 500 packs of seeds to families to encourage home gardens.