Growing Minds: members of OLIN with Philadelphia middle school sudents

Members of OLIN volunteered to help Philadelphia middle school students design a garden at Richard Allen Preparatory School. The students are part of the Growing Minds program which aspires to motivate young people to create positive change in the community through gardening and landscape design. The OLIN team engaged students in brainstorm sessions to help them visualize the design of their garden, working with physical site models and building consensus through group discussion and presentation. The OLIN crew then helped students install a garden path, build Adirondack-style benches from discarded wood crate palettes and plant various shrubs and herbaceous plants ranging from scented silver thyme, lantana, hydrangeas and ornamental grasses.