Earth WeekEvery April, Lovett students organize an Earth Week celebration featuring a bake sale, educational displays, a sale of plants grown in our greenhouse and organic garden, and a special Earth Day speaker. Last year’s festivities featured Sam Stier, the director of education at the Biomimicry Institute.
Students also celebrated Earth Day with an outdoor barbecue and solar concert, organized with the assistance of Tony Nickoloff. Student musicians used speakers and amplifiers powered by the sun to entertain the Lovett community.
Organic GardeningLovett has its own organic garden on campus. A Lovett botany teacher is teaching his students about planting, harvesting, and sustainable food production. The students have been amazed to watch the fruits of their labor grow in front of their eyes, and many have taken to eating produce they may never have otherwise tried.
The garden planting begins with fall crops like broccoli, mustards, kale, and collards. These are grown from seed at the beginning of the school year and then transplanted to the garden. Because these fall crops are ‘frost tolerant,’ these plants can survive winter in the garden.
In February, the students begin ramping up for the spring plantings, which involve a long planning and growth process. Lovett teaches “Planting 101” from scratch. The students make their own soil, which teaches them what soil amendments, nutrients, and dirt make good soil, and how to ensure good drainage, as the seeds germinate in the greenhouse. Summer crops include tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, sweet potatoes, eggplant, peppers, and zucchini. Herbs, such as basil, oregano, sage, and cilantro, are also grown from seed. It is the responsibility of the students to keep all greenhouse plants alive through April, at which point they are moved to the Lovett garden or sold at Lovett’s plant sale.
The students plot out the garden and plan in advance, measuring how many plants can be placed in the square feet available. Through the support of Lovett’s food service program, food from Lovett’s organic garden has already been served in the Dining Hall!
Living MachineThe Model Living Machine is a biomimicry-based project that student, Zainub Dhanani, began in the spring of 2011. It mimics the way nature decomposes and rids an ecosystem of waste. Modeled after John Todd's large-scale Eco-Machines, the Model Living Machine uses a series of four tanks to sustainably clean waste water, in this case, waste water produced by catfish, without using electrical energy. Practically, Eco-Machines are used to clean sewage waste water in a sustainable, energy-saving manner. The system being used in the Lovett model is designed to be self-sustaining, with each tank providing nutrients for the organisms in the following tank. The Model Living Machine will soon be fully completed and on display in the Mr. Crowley's US Science Classroom.
SING & SustainabilitySome of the volunteer sites for the 9th grade SING trip don’t just involve service, but also sustainability. Students work at community gardens for the Atlanta Food Bank, plant trees in the area, landscape Piedmont Park and even beautify Oakland Cemetery. Connecting SING with Lovett’s sustainability initiative is a great way for students to be involved in the community and promote sustainability awareness.