Student Center Garden

This gar­den was plant­ed in the fall of 2010 by an Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence class. Pre­vi­ous­ly, the site was reg­u­lar­ly mowed and the bank’s slope posed ero­sion con­cerns. In addi­tion, the large con­crete sew­er access cov­er was an eye­sore.  The stu­dents reduced the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the lawn by plant­i­ng a low-mow, drought-tol­er­ant grass seed.  The stu­dents plant­ed hardy, creep­ing ground­cov­ers (moss phlox, creep­ing juniper, and bear­ber­ry) to reduce ero­sion on the bank.  Art stu­dents  designed and paint­ed a clever pond theme, involv­ing chil­dren from Massasoit’s Children’s Cen­ter to pro­vide inter­est to the con­crete cov­er.  Final­ly, the stu­dents plant­ed a wild­flower bor­der for sea­son­al inter­est and col­or.  The bor­der has a nat­u­ral­is­tic design but has slight­ly more struc­ture due to the lim­it­ed num­ber of plants and a nar­row col­or theme.  The biggest issue the gar­den faces today is dam­age, such as scrap­ing by snow plows and salt spray, after heavy snowfall.

The fol­low­ing plants are in the Stu­dent Cen­ter Garden:

Lawn

• Pearl’s Pre­mi­um

Bank

• Moss phlox (Phlox sub­u­la­ta)
• Creep­ing juniper (Junipe­rus hor­i­zon­tal­is)
• Bear­ber­ry (Arc­tostaphy­los uva-ursi)

Wild­flower border

• Blaz­ing star (Lia­tris spp.)
• Bowman’s root (Porter­an­thus tri­fo­lia­tus)
• East­ern blues­tar (Amso­nia taber­nae­mon­tana)
• New Eng­land aster ‘Pur­ple Dome’
• Prairie dropseed (Sporob­u­lus het­erolepis)
• Appalachi­an sedge (Carex appalachi­ca)