10/11 Today the students and local residents embarked on the “Tankyu” or “Research Day” Flower Road Project which involved working together with local residents to help make Toyoake City a more beautiful place to live. As part of this activity with the help of the teachers the school provided each group with three wooden planters, drainage stones, soil and zip ties. Drainage holes were then drilled in each of the planters and the students attached laminated signs to each set of planters explaining about this project.
The students were given the task of selecting appropriate flowers for both the planters and the planting areas at Zengo Station. Some of the flowers selected were pansies, daisies, pink dianthus, cyclamen, bugleweed, lavender and mountain phlox.
In the morning of the day the students carried the emptyplanters from Seijoh High School to Sakuragaoka park where they met up with the local volunteers and after hearing briefings from teachers and local leaders they started the project. Teams were made up of 3-5 students and 1-2 local residents and they initially had to set up the wooden planters in pre-assigned positions and then attach the planters to each other and to the metal posts beside the road. Once this task had been completed they then had to fill their three planters with a thin layer of drainage stones before adding the soil. Finally, three small holes were dug, water was added then the flowers were planted. The flowers selected for the planters were viola, garden cyclamen and African pansies. This activity proved to work very smoothly and it was great to see our students interacting well and working together with the local residents to achieve this aim.
Since this activity was completed the students have come up with a detailed watering plan whereby they will water the plants with reused pet bottles of water from school on their way home via Zengo Station.
In the afternoon the project switched to the lower level planting area on the raised deck at Zengo Station where the students worked alongside local residents from various planting related groups. Each group of students was assigned a certain area to work on with the help of local residents and set about loosening up the compacted soil and adding fresh bagged soil. Once that was completed holes were dug for the flowers and then watered thoroughly. Finally, the flowers sets were placed in the holes and covered lightly with soil.
Even though the weather was very hot the students did a fantastic job and worked really hard to achieve their aim. There were also lots of positive interactions between the students and local residents which made for a very enjoyable day for all.
Now let’s do our best to keep these areas looking beautiful and keep watering these flowers.
