GARDEN PROJECT BLOOMS GRANT HIGH STUDENTS BUILDING A GREENER CAMPUS.

Byline: RICK COCA Valley News Writer

While their agricultural department no longer exists, students at Grant High School are working hard to ensure there's plenty of natural beauty on the Valley Glen campus.

Under the leadership of history teacher Gladys Aldana, who also heads the Campus Beautification Club, about 150 students have participated in classes and programs designed to give students hands-on experience creating natural settings in urban environments.

With a new ``service learning'' graduation requirement for seniors in 2007, many students are working on the project to graduate, while some are doing it in conjunction with classes and still others are simply volunteering.

The result has been the ongoing transformation of an isolated area on campus that once housed the agriculture department classroom, greenhouse and garden area.

Renamed the Serenity Garden, the acre of land will ultimately feature a community garden, a wildlife habit garden, a Monarch butterfly house and a potting room to go along with the recently redesigned greenhouse and nearby classroom.

Although agricultural classes were cut last fall, Aldana said the school has received a couple of key grants from the city's Office of Community Beautification. The school has also received 12 fruit trees from the environmental group TreePeople and two jacaranda trees from the Los Angeles County Arboretum.

Greater Valley Glen Council member Micky Jannol and his wife, Ellen, donated $500 to the students' efforts and were instrumental in the council's recent plans to donate $1,000 for the purchase of plants for the campus' gardens.

The community garden will feature about 40 plots of land that students, faculty and community members can use to plant flowers and vegetables. Its American-design will pay homage to the ``four directions,'' representing the four points of the compass, by including four paths with different archways. The paths will lead to a center section of the garden with a sitting area where students and others can relax.

Volunteer and UCLA landscape design student Andrea Barbosa is designing the Wildlife Habitat Garden, which will include a smaller California native garden. Aldana said Barbosa is an accountant who showed up one day after seeing a ``volunteers wanted'' sign posted outside the school.

English teacher Aaron Stell has also involved his classes through service learning by tying together certain periods of literature to nature, Aldana said.

The ultimate goal is to have the Serenity Garden and surrounding gardens and classroom be a place that all people in Valley Glen can enjoy. Aldana said with proper funding most of the work should be complete sometime next year.

For information on volunteering or donating to the Grant High School garden project, call Gladys Aldana at [phone], or e-mail her at [e-mail].

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Photo:

Students talk on their cell phones as they walk through the Serenity Garden at Grant High School in Valley Glen.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer