Conservation Education Outreach by Barbara Geltosky

Barbara Guiding the Project

In May, 5 members of The Gardeners, with the help of community volunteers, met at St Augustine Church in Norristown to make terrariums with a group of second through fourth grade girls in an after-school program.  According to their website, The St. Augustine Academy for youth is an after-school enrichment program for Norristown girls in Grades 1 – 4.  The Monday and Wednesday program runs from 3:30 to 5:45 following the school calendar.  The St. Augustine Academy has been designed to raise self-esteem and confidence by supplementing student school work and focusing on critical life skills.  Their goal is to create an environment that will nurture and secure healthy girls. This wonderful program is run on a shoestring. The benefactor who funded this after-school program is a friend of Deb Donaldson and so the idea of teaching these girls about the environment using terrariums was born.

Students Listening

Terrarium Material

Completed Project

Deb bought and donated the plants and other materials to make the soda bottle terrariums.  The Gardeners group collected soda bottles, which Deb cut with a tile cutter to create the base and top of the terrariums.  Setting up and guiding sixteen little girls kept Sarah Collier and Lyn Marinchak on their toes.  A prospective member of The Gardeners, Liz Mercogliano, was also on board to help, as was Ann Calvert who had met some of us when we helped out with clerking during the rescheduled hort judging at the Flower Show. Barbara Geltosky talked to the girls about what an environment is and how terrariums are made while demonstrating how to carry out the project to the group of girls and helpers. One little girl answered Barbara’s question about what an environment was with great accuracy for a second grader.

One never knows who gets more out of these important projects–the teachers or the students.  The girls really enjoyed filling the terrariums with plants, marbles and little amphibians as a gift for mother’s day and we enjoyed working with them!

In our last educational outreach of the season, Liz Mercogliano and Barbara Geltosky took the remaining little succulents from the Gardener’s Philadelphia Flower show exhibit and a window box to Mrs. Robinson’s second grade class at New Eagle School. The second graders who enjoyed our pollinator presentation last fall will use the succulents to make a window box.

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