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Beneath the stream of litter that flows through University Avenue, a tiny prairie crouches. In spring, spiderwort blossoms threw a periwinkle contrast against the fray; now, in late summer, faded Echinacea and heavily seeded Canadian rye grass blend easily with the concrete-bordered currents. Hand-painted signs hang from two honey-locust trees like buoys floating above the river of debris.

The garden occupies just one boulevard plot. Neighboring rectangles sport the more common neglected urban roadside vegetation: spotty invasives, dandelions and butter-and-eggs, struggle with a few sprouts of grass to cover dry, sandy soil. Is the garden, with its collapsing grasses and tall, yellow asters, more beautiful than its neighbors? Confettied with litter, festooned with a spare tire left by a passerby, perhaps not – but this garden plays host to a captivating metamorphosis every spring.

For two years, science students at Creative Arts High School in the St. Paul ALC have planned and sweated this garden into existence. The garden began as a 2004 Earth Day brainstorm in which environmental science students envisioned a nexus of hardy, native flora that could educate our school community about prairie plants and chemical-free gardening. These students spent two days manually removing weeds, and planted two plots with over 20 species of Minnesota native grasses and forbs. Mulch donated by a local tree-trimming company helped keep down weeds and regulate moisture levels. The garden looked great for a few months, but summer vacation, foot traffic, and snow plows took their toll: by snowmelt, the two plots were flat, brown footpaths. By spring of 2005, the garden had slipped into oblivion. Its only notoriety was its startling ability to provoke derisive comments from visitors and administrators. I began to listen to the whispers that perhaps, even though last year’s students really loved planting rattlesnake master and blazing star, we should recognize the cause as lost and mow under the ugly remnants of their work.

But then one class of students elected to make the garden’s revival their end-of-year project. They fanagled donations of river rock to border the garden, held a bake sale to buy edging, and labored to haul new layers of the year-old mulch (now spotted with interesting fungal and invertebrate populations) to blanket the plants’ roots. Because there was no money to buy new plants, the students chose to fill out the empty spaces left by dead plants by concentrating the survivors of both plots into a single plot. After hand-digging dozens of transplants, they hand-painted signs to hang from the garden’s trees. Pretty soon, the patch of salty, sandy land was garnering praise instead of condemnation. Folks stopped talking about mowing it under. And in early June, with a small group of dedicated student gardeners crouching among newly flowering golden Alexanders, the garden took on the glow of a well-cared-for place.

This winter, when the big bluestem slowly fades from purple to pale gray, this miniscule evidence of native beauty may well sink back into the tide of ugly urbanity that currently laps at its shores. Maybe next spring a new group of students will add their brains and toil to what is now becoming a student-driven legacy, a growing proof of the simple truth that students, just like all other human beings, can induce incredible transformation when they are able to create ownership over their work and have the freedom to manifest their ideas.

Megan Hall
Biology Teacher
Creative Arts ALC

Image Gallery: Boulevard Garden Pictures

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