Service Learning is an integral part of our campus, illustrating our devotion to giving back to the community. The Sage garden, initially created as a Service Learning project, helps distinguish and represent our devotion to living organic and healthy lifestyles.

A new Service Learning Project this year is being launched that parallels the values of the garden. Known as Ecolab, this project, led by English teacher Joan Alvarez, partners with nearby schools in the area that want to build their own organic gardens.

This group will create and help teach students around Orange County to sustain their own schools’ gardens. Specifically, these Ecolab students will teach these fellow schools about Ecology, the importance of loving nature, where food comes from and how the world feeds itself.

A unique element to Ecolab that Alvarez stressed is how it is a “student led project” and combines multiple campus values into a single, multifaceted endeavor.

We have had the garden for five years, and it used to be known as Savannah’s Organic Garden.

Savannah was a young girl who suffered from a terminal cancer. She loved organic food and believed people could live happy, healthy lifestyles, despite all the challenges she faced with her own personal health.

Her dream and determination inspired the installation of an organic garden on campus, which is devoted to utilizing natural resources in Orange County and showing the benefits of growing our own fruits and vegetables. The Garden Club maintains the garden, meeting once a week, to tend the fruits and vegetables and collect eggs from the chickens.

Over the summer and during school breaks, Kyle Pheasant maintains and tends the garden. Pheasant “helped with the original construction and layout of the garden” due to his prior knowledge with gardening. Additionally, Pheasant handles wildlife disruptions on campus and, for the past few years, has dealt with the owls in the clocktower and handled the necessary means to make sure they are safe and healthy. Pheasant would like to emphasize that it truly takes a lot of people to maintain the garden and would like to thank parents, the Garden Club and the Science Department for all their contributions to the facility.