Continuing Community Effort

Calhoun Outdoor Learning Classroom continues to grow due to the focus and collaborative efforts of Ms. Michelle Rainer, Calhoun Middle School Science Teacher. For the past eight years Ms. Rainer has dreamed of an outdoor classroom that all students and teachers can enjoy.

Ms. Rainer received a $300.00 grant from Keep Denton Beautiful to create a butterfly garden for the Outdoor Learning Classroom. Add that to the fundraising efforts of the SEED club, a $100 donation from Home Depot, labor from Frenchy’s and Mr. John Noles's donation of rocks and soil.  The Outdoor Learning Classroom now has a beautiful fall-blooming butterfly garden.

Ms. Rainer contacted The Denton County Texas Master Gardeners, The Elm Fork Texas Master Naturalists and The Texas Native Plants Society to aid her and her students in the designing and planting of the garden. Ms. Dorothy Thetford, TNPS and Ms Tracy Durmick, TMG met with the SEED club and educated them on good plant choices to attract butterflies and survive Texas’s hot dry climate. After the students designed their fall-blooming butterfly garden, Ms. Cherly Kesterson, TMN and Ms. Sher Harnish, TMG, led several workdays to plant it.  First Frenchy’s came out and scraped the soil to remove all of the invasive Bermuda. In order not to have to use herbicides, wet newspaper was thickly layered to block the Bermuda grass from continuing to grow in the butterfly garden. Then topsoil and compost were added. Texas Master Naturalist Intern Mr. Gary built a trellis for the passion vine and cypress vine to grow on. Soaker hoses were put down. Then the Texas native plants that were carefully chosen by Ms. Thetford and SEED club students were planted.