11/25/2009 9:12:00 AM
Orme students learn sustainability in practice
Tools for the future
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Orme students, along with Northern Arizona University students and Orme Director of Sustainability David Hutchens, center, spent a cold November Friday building cold frames for the program's winter gardens at Orme.
BBNPhoto/Heidi Dahms Foster |
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When Orme School co-founder Minna Orme, a Stanford University-educated botanist, imported and planted a number of species of trees and flowers at the school beginning in 1929, she set the stage for a distinctive program of sustainability education for many years into the future.
On Nov. 13, a group of students in Orme's Sustainability and Southwest Studies curriculum joined with several students in Northern Arizona University's Landward and sustainable living studies program to further several projects at Orme.
The students, along with Orme's Director of Sustainability, David Hutchens, spent the day building two cold frames for winter and spring gardens, sprucing up a compost area, and discussing the school's arboretum project. They also carried on a lively discussion about the meaning of sustainability and the reasons for choosing to use sustainable practices.
Some of the students had never used the tools required to construct the cold frames, which consisted of recycled wooden and glass doors, but they were willing to try, and enjoyed the sense of accomplishment they felt when the first frame was complete and ready for planting.
Hutchens was patient, asking the students how they would approach each step of the construction.
"Unless we pass our knowledge on to each other," he told the students, "we will have missed the boat. I want to give you something to walk away with."
They inspected several possible locations for the frames at the school's Southwest Studies Center for Sustainability area, which is under construction in a former horse corral area. After some lively discussion, the students compromised on two locations. Later, they'll compare the success of both and see if their reasons for placing the cold frames result in optimum growth.
It's that kind of thinking that Hutchens is working to instill in his students.
"I've been a gardener all my life, and part of me wants to control everything. But I realize that this is an opportunity to share with the students and empower them with the practical application of doing and learning. I'm learning more than they are in trusting them to apply themselves and have a sense of responsibility and ownership. They are responding very well to that," he said.
The students are participating in a number of projects, including a greenhouse garden that is currently planted with tomatoes, carrots, peas, peppers, beans, zucchinis and corn. When they return from the holidays, they will plant the cold frames, and in the spring, cover the back of the frames and plant "hoop gardens." While students are not at the school during prime growing months, Hutchens simply wants to give them the knowledge and the satisfaction of planting and growing.
"We want to give them a basic understanding of where food comes from, and their relationship to nature," he said. "If they can grow a radish in three weeks, then pull it and eat it, then they have success, they've got it."
The gardens are just one project in which the students are participating during their studies. Others, all major undertakings in themselves, include a recycling program, monitoring power use and practicing conservation at each of the major dormitories on campus, sustainable ranching and the arboretum that Minna Orme began nearly 80 years ago.
As the arboretum project takes shape first in the historic portion of the school, students will each adopt a tree and learn all they can about it. The ceramics class will craft placards for many of the plant and tree species within the arboretum, preparing for the time when people will be able to tour the area and view the fruits of Minna Orme's love of botany. The arboretum project is giving students, and experts, a workout, Hutchens said. The school grounds offer some of the most mature variety of tree species in the state, and Minna Orme imported many of them.
"What better place than Orme for students to gain a better understanding of the natural environment?" he said.
Additionally, the Orme School is the site for a new anemometer, which will measure wind speed and velocity. It has a solar-powered monitor that will download information into a data base and connect students to a regional resource network study of the region's potential for wind energy.
The Orme Ranch also plays a big part in sustainability education at the school. Students work with ranch manager Alan Kessler on ranch projects, including range, vegetation and drought management, ranch economics and more. The Orme Ranch now supplies grass fed beef to a number of local outlets.
If Hutchens and the innovative students of Orme and NAU have their way, they will find uses for many of the normal castoffs of ranching and living at the school, just as they did with the old doors and windows that are now cold frames for gardens.
"You can do a lot with what you have," Hutchens told the students. "Look at the world around you and see what it can bring to your project."
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