NEW ALBANY — Shellie Burton’s support to S. Ellen Jones Elementary goes outside of her position as a cafeteria employee.
This summer, she worked with her husband to rework a backyard at the New Albany school into a gorgeous house for the two learners and employees to get pleasure from.
“It was all for the young ones,” Shellie explained. “That’s why we did it.”
When COVID-19 hit, team at S. Ellen Jones was far too busy to retain the back garden as they saved up with security protocols, Shellie mentioned. The backyard, found in a courtyard at the school, became overgrown, and the place had a pond that was in bad shape, which was later on taken out.
She collaborated with her husband, Rick, to total the venture, and they acquired aid from the neighborhood. Rick performs at Earth 1st of Kentuckiana, a firm that offers landscaping resources.
They brought a tiny tractor to the university to put together the ground for the garden. Earth Very first donated mulch for the project, and Dan’s Landscaping volunteered to place down the mulch and the rock.
They introduced in bouquets and yard decorations, and they applied potted crops to limit the weeding and repairs demanded for the backyard garden.
Right after a month and a fifty percent of operate, the project wrapped up in late July, just in time for university.
S. Ellen Jones Principal Stacey Meadors said the faculty is “extremely appreciative to Shellie and to her spouse, Rick.”
“They have completed a great quantity of get the job done to make our yard a spot we want to go once again,” she claimed. “Before, it experienced just been variety of operate down, and it was not applied. We maintained it the very best we could, but we experienced very confined resources, so they have made it a spot we want to go and delight in.”
“The children adore likely out there — they like wanting out the windows and commenting on all the wonderful issues in the backyard garden, so we are just extremely appreciative of all their tricky function,” she stated. “We want absolutely everyone in the neighborhood to know what a superb work they’ve completed on it.”
The learners have served pull weeds and water the vegetation, and they like the functions this sort of as the chimes and backyard decorations, Shellie reported.
The faculty is also arranging to insert a handful of picnic tables to the backyard garden. It’s a room exactly where pupils and personnel can delight in some peaceful time to acquire their views, have a one-on-just one conversation or examine a reserve, Shellie mentioned.
“We just required to make positive this is a child-welcoming area,” she stated. “That was my objective — for the children listed here to get pleasure from it as considerably as the lecturers.”
She and her husband keep on to manage the room on a weekly basis, together with weeding the yard and taking away sticks.
A person trainer informed her she enjoys hunting out her classroom window to see the flowers on a day by day basis. Shellie also enjoys ingesting her personal lunch in the backyard garden.
“Every working day I occur out below because it just takes your temper to a distinctive put when you occur out in a pleasant, quiet placing,” she stated. “You’ve had a frantic working day, some days, and you appear out listed here and assemble your thoughts, and you go back again to get the job done.”
