We started the 2008-09 school year with a special focus for our Fine Arts Studio: a garden grew with help from many community partners, local businesses and entities, focused on the environment and now partnering with us in education. We would like to thank our community partners for their donations to the first phase of the Bulldog Botanical Garden:

Backbone Valley Nursery, which donated compost and mulch;
Lil' Plant Stand and Lily Day Gardens for the beautiful plants.

The garden is a place where our artists can do botanical drawings, and where we can also learn about the plant cycle, the life cycle of butterflies as well as the water cycle, and demonstrate our learning through Art, Music and Theatre projects.

The Central Texas Groundwater Conservation District has generously donated a rainwater harvesting cistern, which demonstrates water conservation to all of our 4th and 5th grade students.


DAGHER TRAIL:

Dagher Trail was installed through our Change for Earth project in April 2009. It was the culmination of great work by our 4th and 5th grade Science Club members, who together brainstormed ways that we could fund a trail and outdoor classroom in the RJR front yard. What a great accomplishment! By hosting a Change for Earth program, complete with skits, songs and poetry, an art exhibit and a bakesale, students and families raised $700! It paid for the crushed granite that we used for the trail, and Bostic Co. generously donated the limestone slabs for the seating.
Students from Burnet High School NHS earned community service hours to help us lay the trail on Global Youth Service Day (gysd.org/) when youth around the world contribute in some way to their community. In all, 181 hours were donated to RJ Richey's Change for Earth 2009 project.
Finally, we have named the trail in honor of our wonderful Mr. Dagher, who has served in education for 60 years.

Photo of Texas wildflowers by Samantha Melvin, 2008.