GREEN CITY YOUTH: Bache Martin School

During the 2006-07 year, Bache-Martin School’s Green City Youth classes used horticulture as a way of improving both their community and their city.

Bache Martin students planting windowboxes outside their school

Over the course of the year, both regular and special needs students at this school in the Fairmount neighborhood worked together learning about the importance of community greening. They made
a photographic green tour of their neighborhood, visited the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, the Fairmount Waterworks, the Philadelphia Flower Show and PHS’s Kids Grow Expo.

In February they hosted a special “Groundhog Day Ceremony” at Tinicum Refuge. Participating in PHS’s “City Hall in Bloom” project, the students saw first hand the improvements planting flowers can make. They then decided to enhance their own school façade by installing flower adorned window boxes on the first floor of their school building. These students also provided house plants for classrooms inside their building.      

Bache Martin students celebrate Groundhog Day at Tinicum Refuge.