Upper Elementary closed the garden accounts for the year with $41 to spare, a squirrel problem they have not solved, and a proposal for next season already drafted.
The garden runs on a real budget. It is small — $1,400 for the year, from the Annual Fund — and it is kept by students, in a ledger, with receipts. Every February the group proposes what to plant. Every July they have to say what happened.
Here is what happened.
The numbers
- Opening balance, February: $1,400.
- Seed, soil amendment, and two replacement bed frames: $1,003.
- Irrigation repair in June, after a split hose nobody owned up to: $187.
- Netting, purchased in haste: $169.
- Closing balance, July: $41.
They came in under budget by about three percent, which is a better result than the school’s facilities line managed this year, and they know it.
The squirrels
In early June the group lost most of a tomato bed over four days. The first response was netting, purchased quickly and installed badly, and the squirrels went under it. The second response was a proposal to trap the squirrels, which was voted down at community meeting on the grounds that it was, in the words of one nine-year-old, “not our decision to make about something that lives here.”
The third response was to plant more tomatoes than the squirrels could eat. This did not work either, but it produced better data.
What they are proposing for next year
The draft proposal asks for $1,650, on the grounds that bed frames should be replaced on a schedule rather than in an emergency, and that the netting should be bought properly and once. It also proposes moving the tomatoes to the south beds and giving the squirrels the north strip on purpose, which the group is calling a “tithe” and which their guide is calling a negotiated settlement.
The Upper Elementary Community
Written and checked by the garden group, Montessori Makers School
Writing from the classrooms is published four times a term and collected in the termly letter. Questions are welcome at hello@montessorimakersschool.org.