Millikan Middle School Students Plant Earth Day Garden on Saturday

On Saturday, between 8:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. teachers, parents and students are inviting the community to come to help to create an Earth Day Community Garden.

The planting is going on at the Millikan Middle School gardens in Sherman Oaks.

The students, teachers, and parents are creating a California native rain garden on their school campus this Earth Day Weekend. Millikan Middle School is 5041 Sunnyslope Ave.

The Millikan rain garden represents the culmination of a unique partnership between Valley residents, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the nonprofit organization, TreePeople, and the Urban Green Interventions program at Burbank's Woodbury University. It is the result of efforts by school parents to beautify a 2,000 square-foot part of campus that was neglected and  filled with standing water for years.  

"I went to the school open house last year and noticed these large muddy plots filled with water and mud that kids then tracked into classrooms," said former parent Christine Kim, a parent at the school. "They were depressing. I couldn't understand why they had to be that way.” Within a day Kim made two phone calls, one to Shana Landsburg, then the PTA President, and one to the office of LAUSD School Board Vice President Tamar Galatzan.

What followed was a series of fortunate events. Galatzan's office introduced the parents to Tracy Bartley, LAUSD's then-Sustainable Schools Ombudsperson. Bartley connected the parents with environmental non-profit TreePeople. Through TreePeople, the parents met a professor from Woodbury University’s Landscape Architect, Barry Talley, who runs an Urban Green Interventions Program.  

This spring, Talley and his students worked with 40 Millikan students in the Environmental Studies Academy to design a garden that will drain the stagnant water. Last weekend, students and parents dug in with shovels to loosen and regrade the land to absorb rain water. Tomorrow, they will plant the area with California native plants, paid for by a grant from The Charitable Foundation at Prudential California Realty.

"I think the beauty of this project is in so many people coming together so swiftly and easily,” said Talley. “Together they solved a problem, and taught all of us -- kids and adults -- how landscape design can help fight global warming."