Cobb drought garden a teaching tool for kids

“We’re precipitation! We’re precipitation!” chanted a group of Cobb County first-graders, swinging their arms in rhythm with the chant.

The students at Compton Elementary School in Powder Springs were outside in Wednesday morning’s brisk temperatures, doing the “water-cycle boogie” and celebrating the opening of the school’s drought-tolerant garden, a hardy oasis created by a $57,000 grant and the labor of more than a hundred volunteers.

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ELISSA EUBANKS/eeubanks@ajc.com

Students from Compton Elementary in Powder Springs gather around a Lowe’s representative as he plants a cabbage plant in the school’s new drought-resistant garden that was funded by Lowe’s.

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ELISSA EUBANKS/eeubanks@ajc.com

A Compton Elementary student carries two two-gallon jugs of water through a relay race in the school’s new drought-resistant garden. The relay was meant to teach the children to conserve water. The Lowe’s representative told the students that generally people consume 100 gallons of water a day. These two-gallon jugs are meant to represent that amount showing the students just how much water that is.

Photos: More pictures from the garden's opening ceremonies.

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Most of the 530 students at the West Cobb school also helped, lining up Wednesday to dig holes for pansies and chrysanthemums, carefully patting and packing the earth around flowering annuals.

“Use your muscles, Angel!” urged kindergarten teacher Debbie Smith, as a bright-eyed youngster dug a spot for a purple pansy.

“Why do you think she’s doing that at the bottom?” Smith asked her charges as a volunteer untangled the root-bound soil of a decorative kale plant she unpotted.

“To get the roots loose,” shouted two youngsters.

While the students enjoyed outside time, educators praised the project as a hands-on way to study conservation, botany and good citizenship.

“This is learning at its pinnacle,” said Cobb County assistant superintendent Steven Constantino, who observed the morning ceremonies, which included a traditional ribbon-cutting and a non-traditional sawing in half of a decorative plank. “This also ties in with Georgia performance standards in science,” he said. “It’s so much better than reading in a book about it.”

The project was funded by a grant from home improvement store Lowe’s. Volunteers from Lowe’s stores throughout metro Atlanta gathered at Compton last month to put in hardscape elements of the garden, such as the meandering brick path that conducts visitors to an outdoor classroom in the nearby woods, and a dry creekbed paved with handsome round river stones.

Lowe’s and other home stores have been hard hit by drought conditions that have weakened their landscaping sales as homeowners shy from investing in plants.

But Kathy Nguyen, conservation coordinator for the Cobb County Water system, said the garden, with its hardy abelia, cone-flowers and weeping Yaupon, demonstrates that wise planting can be water-wise, environmentally friendly and attractive.

“You can have something this beautiful that requires so little supplemental irrigation,” said Nguyen, taking a break from leading groups of children in movement and song.

The garden will also provide ongoing lessons, educators said. On Wednesday the students learned about cleaning up after their pets from Gwen Baldwin, with the Keep Cobb Beautiful program.

“Today,” she told a group of kindergarteners, “we’re going to talk about dog poo.”

“Yuck!” said the first-graders.

But soon the children were nodding in agreement as Baldwin discussed the important job of keeping creeks and rivers clean and the possibility of pet fecal matter contaminating runoff. She demonstrated the right way to used a plastic bag, employing trick-shop dog waste instead of the real thing.

Then the children ran a “poo race,” collecting rubbery trick-shop specimens from a field outside the school, using proper plastic bag technique, and screaming with excitement.

Randall Burks, manager of the Alpharetta Lowe’s and a coordinator of the project, has participated in other volunteer garden projects, but said this is the largest.

As he watched crowds of children digging, racing and laughing, he seemed happy with the seeds that had been planted. “This is my favorite part,” he said.