Just last week, 80 fourth grade students from Robert Moton Elementary School in Westminster, Maryland celebrated their winning garden design with a special prize trip, arranged by the National Park Foundation, to visit a handful of national parks in our nation’s capital. These students have been working with Catoctin Mountain Park since the beginning of the school year to design a garden full of native plant species . You can check out their winning design here.

Ranger Patrick talking to Robert Moton Elementary School students about Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Island

The group began the day at Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Island where Ranger Patrick and Ranger Emily led the students on a short trail walk. Surrounded by leafy, green foliage and the sounds of nature, students learned about Roosevelt’s role in the conservation movement and the history of the island. The group then headed to the Jefferson Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial, where they heard the story about how their school’s namesake, Dr. Robert Moton, gave the keynote address at the dedication ceremony of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922. The students were in awe of this fact. The visit ended with a brief stop to view the impressive Washington Monument before heading back to school. Overall, their day in D.C. was a great way to build off of their experience with Catoctin Mountain Park and help nurture a lasting, more meaningful relationship with their national parks.

WBAL TV in Baltimore, MD ran a segment on the students and their winning design. You can watch “Students Win National Contest By Building Garden” here. Read what Baltimore Sun’s Susan Reimer has to say about the project in her post “Students team with Catoctin Mountain Park for award-winning design” on her blog “Garden Variety”. And if you still have time, definitely take a look at Carroll County Times reporter Carrie Ann Knauer’s “Robert Moton fourth-graders win national contest for garden” and Westminster Patch blogger Kym Byrnes’ “Robert Moton Students Shine with Winning Garden Design”.

You can help support National Park Foundation programs like First Bloom by visiting nationalparks.org.

But from the blackfoot daisies and rock roses down to the mulch made of crushed pecan shells, the pair of 200-square-foot gardens are the culmination of 12 students’ months long study of South Texas’ native plants.

“That’s student empowerment: letting them make these decisions,” said teacher Elijiah Rios of the Southeast branch of the Boys and Girls Club, one of the instructors for the First Bloom program at the Missions National Historic Park. First Bloom is a nationwide program supported by the National Park Foundation to educate urban youths about the natural world. Former First Lady Laura Bush launched the program in 2007 to honor another former first lady, Lady Bird Johnson…

“A lot of San Antonians don’t know they have a national park in their backyard,” he said…

Although students will now shift their focus to beautifying their Boys and Girls Club campus, the remainder of the program will include periodic trips to check and care for the gardens they planted Friday.

“The process definitely doesn’t stop when they put it in the ground, and they need to learn that,” Rios said.

Other activities have ranged from explaining the parts of a plant to history lessons about the crops cultivated by Spanish settlers at the historic missions.

“We’ve taught meteorology and biology mixed in with colonial history as to why some plants were brought over,” said Castanos… Students have also taken field trips such as a Saturday morning spent locating invasive plant species near Mission San Juan…

Students cited learning about such things as the water cycle and soil types in their science classes, but added they liked that the First Bloom program gave them a chance to get their hands dirty.

“It’s kind of like the same thing, but a whole different kind of lesson with actual animals and actual plants,” Abigail said.

Today filmaker Ken Burns will receive a tour of the new gardens from the kids. Burns’ upcoming film, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, was sponsored in part by the National Park Foundation. The six-part, 12-hour series set to air in September 2009 on PBS explores the history and heritage of America’s national parks.

‘Adolfo Guzman, 13, is already becoming a green thumb, recently instructing his uncle in how to plant a potted coneflower. “He was doing it all wrong,” Adolfo said.’

Read the entire article here.