building the bed, originally uploaded by Prince of Petworth.

Photos taken by Johnny Casana.

I bumped into some folks (Dan, John, Christen, Johnny and Natty) installing gardening boxes at the newly renovated Cesar Chavez Charter School. I love bumping into projects like this.

One of the participants, John, sent me the following by email:

“This weekend, we installed five large raised beds and filled them with compost; we will be building roughly ten more once we secure funding, and we’ll be painting them all so they look nice. The garden will be an educational garden for the school, which is one of the Cezar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy.

There will be a community open house that will take place at the school on October 30th, and we hope to have a sign up by then and educate DC council members, other VIPs, teachers and parents about the concept. We (that is, the folks you saw, five of us who are volunteering our time as the Columbia Heights Garden Club) plan to work with school administrators and faculty over the winter to engage the students in the planning and planting for these spaces next spring. Eventually, we hope to assist with incorporating the garden into the curriculum, teaching young people about growing food, native plants, storm water runoff, and more. And we hope to engage the community along the way.”