The students wanted to expand our native habitat with a focus on addressing the flooding of the shoreline next to the practice softball field. The walking path and turf grass between the softball field and the shoreline is perpetually soggy and unusable.
The students discovered that they can mitigate flooding in the field by replacing a 15 foot x 300 foot strip of the turf grass with a native plant buffer that would soak up excess water, provide habitat for pollinators, and filter excess nutrients to prevent them from polluting the lake. The students brought the school\\\\\\\'s stakeholders together with an ecological restoration expert to discuss what we could do before school ended in spring of 2023 to convert this space into native habitat. They installed a sedge matrix with short forbs that would provide nectar and habitat for diverse local and migratory wildlife. We used the grant money to purchase planting supplies for our project.
