The school garden is a recent development to our district, and is a place that was designed for the students, by the students. It is still in its early stages but will eventually become an outdoor classroom full of flowering plants, trees and shrubs. Each rock, plant and path was added by the students. It is an area they take great pride in.

Here is a blurb from a press release written by 4th grade teacher, Carrie Meneguzzo, that includes an update on our school garden:

"Students at T.R. Davis Elementary (Dollar Bay-Tamarack City Area Schools) have received funding from the Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative (LSSI) and NOAA B-WET to help continue their stewardship work in the community. This funding will allow four different projects to take place:

1.     The elementary students are working with Osceola Township to create a community garden space in Dollar Bay on the corner of 5th and Fir Streets. Families will be able to borrow a 4’x6’ planting bed for the summer planting season, free of charge! This will be a great place for our community to come together to learn about the importance of healthy eating and to learn how fun and easy it is to care for a garden. 

2.     Mrs. Hill’s local history class has undertaken a project to create virtual field trips to these local historical sites: Mason, the dredge, Senter, Quincy Mine, Tamarack City, Hungarian Falls, Lake Linden, Calumet and Clifton. 

3.     The students will also be using some of the funds to maintain our current school garden. We will be building bird houses, adding additional plants to the garden and purchasing mulching materials to keep our plants happy and healthy. 

4.     Students at DB-TC will be raising salmon! We have recently been accepted into the DNR’s Salmon in the Classroom program. We will get the salmon eggs in the fall, raise them all school year and release them into local streams in the spring! Supplemental funding from LSSI has allowed the elementary, middle and high school science department to purchase the materials necessary for this project.  Jeffers High School has loaned us the tank and chiller and the grant has allowed us to purchase all of the consumable materials (filters, etc.) that are needed to keep an aquarium healthy.  

Our school has also recently received a Portage Health Foundation Community Garden grant! This grant will allow us to purchase two indoor container garden systems so that we can begin to grow plants and herbs indoors all throughout the fall and winter! We are very excited about this and can’t wait to add an indoor garden to our school."