Celebrate Earth Day Every Day

Green schools protect the environment, keep teachers and students healthy,
and promote environmental literacy – a triple bottom line!

Greening every school in America within a generation

Earth Day this year is committed to greening every school in America within a generation. Green schools significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs, improve student and teacher health, and enhance student motivation. With children spending two-thirds of their waking hours inside schools, benefits like pure air quality, healthy lighting, safe outdoor spaces, and high quality cafeteria food aren’t fancy extras – they are essential.

This April 22nd, as the world celebrates Earth Day, at Lincoln Landscaping it will be “business as usual”. Our core foundations and all of our services and personnel celebrate Earth Day Every Day. We strive to maintain and build sustainable landscaping environments, initiate organic turf and playing field management as well as other “green” principles at many learning institutions, municipalities and public parks within New Jersey and beyond.

Here at Lincoln Landscaping we firmly believe that if we can get to these kids early and get them to appreciate the value of gardening and working in the yard , thereby spending time outdoors it’s a win-win situation. If we can instill a love for mother earth at an early age, this planet will be so much better. There is such a fine of balance in nature between health and disease.

So what’s the answer? There are many, but one of them has to be the “crux” of the matter and herein are some recent facts that point to the very core beliefs of this Earth Day.

Many of the kids who go to John J. Pershing Elementary School in Dallas do not spend much time outdoors. They live in what some would describe as unsafe neighborhoods and their parents often do not let them go outside and play.

“They look at life through a window,” said Margie Hernandez, the school’s principal.
But these kids are at least experiencing the great outdoors when they are at school. Four years ago, Pershing built a garden that has grown to include a pond and four chickens. Teachers take students into the garden at least once a week for class or just for a walk, to pick some basil or water the chickens.
When they are in the garden, “children who normally would not speak or raise their hand are now engaging in a lesson without being prompted,” Hernandez said. And the effects seem to last after they leave the garden. The students are scoring better on standardized tests and are just more excited in general about school.

The blossoming health and academic benefits of school gardens, Educating America's Youth

The key part of the above article has to be “are now engaging in a lesson without being prompted“. By being more engaged they are also interacting more with one another in a positive way promoting growth and harmony. And that’s what we are all clamoring for.

Another way to look at it is like this. The reality of the situation is that we are, whether we like it or not, a product of our “environment”. All of us every day either see in the news or read in the newspaper about some senseless act perpetrated by some loner or misfit of society, a “weed so to speak”. Then comes more news about the deterioration of inner schools and student’s learning and test scores not being up to standard and lack of participation and interaction with students. We now have gangs in schools instead of companions.

In nature there are what we call Companion Plants. Plants do care who lives next door; and the practice of companion planting, has now been recognized as a science by major agricultural research centers and top gardeners. Proof of inter-cropping, where two or more supplemental plant varieties are planted in the same field, can be found in archeological records from prehistoric Europe, Asia and the Americas, signifying its importance in maintaining healthy soil and raising a variety of edibles in small spaces with limited nutrients and water.

There is a lesson to be learned in this. In today’s society we seem to be going in a different direction and instead of having companion cultures we are segmenting ourselves into groups, each having our own criteria and often thinking not of the other. And that is when weeds sprout, take root and foreshadow all else. Companion planting helps control pests because the plants interact with each other, diminishing the pests and weeds and thereby creating an ecosystem benefiting all. Common sense dictates that companion cultures would do the same.

And sustainable, organic gardening and landscaping as shown above, tends to bring this harmony to the forefront within peoples and our youth. An example of our working with youth and children to teach and instill healthy, green and organic gardening is here in our recent “gardening with children” article.

We all want our children to have a healthy environment while at school, we expect it and often many of us don’t even think about it. We just assume its ok at school. But is it? Our children should enjoy recess and gym class and have fun and grow both spiritually and physically doing them. The grounds they play and learn on should be a lush green environment, encouraging such growth, but all too often pesticides and chemicals come into play, not only creating an environment that is unhealthy, but schools, usually encompassing a large area, create excess runoff through rain water and drainage into the surrounding neighborhood and drinking water tables therein.

At Lincoln Landscaping we have been practicing “green” Organic Turf and Lawn Management throughout the state of New Jersey and beyond. From colleges to municipalities, downtown shopping areas to public parks, we not only provide an environment free or harmful chemicals and pesticides, but promote the knowledge thereof within all we come in contact with.

Our “fields of green” page is a good example of what can be achieved with a properly thought out plan of action and ongoing care with regards to the playing fields and parks that we and our children spend much of our time in.

Within the Earth Day website a wealth of information about what you can do to help promote Earth Day Every Day is available. Please take the time to review some of their information and suggestions, your children will appreciate your efforts, guaranteed.

And thanks for letting me ramble on…

Suggested Reading for Earth Day 2017