It’s been an exciting few weeks here at Lutz Botanicals! We just finished up building a fully funded garden for the Hebrew School students of B’nai Tikvah Beth Israel in Sewell, NJ. Our goal for this project is to empower children with the knowledge of how to garden and grow their own food.
How We Did It
I volunteer with the Gloucester County Certified Gardeners. We help maintain various gardens and community projects here in the South Jersey area. With the help of the Certified Gardeners and Home Depot, we received donations for a fully built butterfly garden for the Hebrew School where I teach.
The initial plan for the garden design
Soon this new garden will be used as an outdoor classroom. The goal is to teach the students about wildlife, growing food, and how to help the environment. The space will also be used as a community gathering point where we can come together as a Synagogue. This is something that is becoming more important with the recent news abroad and locally.
Altogether, the planning and funding of the garden took a few months to come together. The build took 2 days, one for the building of the garden and one for the building of the stone patio.
Help from the Community
The majority of materials were donated by Home Depot, who also sent volunteers from the Washington Township store to help build the garden. Quikrete donated the pavers and helped us lay a 10×10 stone paver patio to be used as a seating area. Habitat for Humanity built us children’s sized picnic tables for the kids to enjoy. Scott’s Soil donated raised bed soil for us to grow in our 9 new garden beds. Ivy Plants donated seasonal mums for us to enjoy this winter.
Build day with the Home Depot team
The Gloucester County Certified Gardeners will be growing and donating a variety of native plants for us to use in the butterfly garden. In this section of the garden, we will plant all native plants to provide food for butterflies. We will be planting milkweed, goldenrod, asters and more. I also plan to plant some herbs, strawberries, and other easy crops for the students to enjoy harvesting.
This is the first large project that I have spearheaded and I am very excited and proud with how it turned out. I am excited to get planting in spring, and the students are already enjoying their new space!
