Courtesy Photo Frederick County school teachers on summer vacation toured wildflower habitats at various county schools last week as part of the Schoolyard Habitat program. The garden at Oakdale Elementary School, above, was one of those visited by the teachers. Purchase this photo

April Wells, the schoolyard habitat teacher for Frederick County Public Schools, served as tour guide. The school habitats on the informal tour included Myersville Elementary School, Valley Elementary, Monocacy Elementary and Middle, Windsor Knolls Middle School and Oakdale Elementary.

Each school has a garden that Wells helped to plant. Teachers at the schools obtain grant money through environmental organizations and work with Wells to plan the gardens. Students do the planting and maintenance work during the school year.

But the gardens are usually at their best in summer, when the students are on vacation. Wells wanted the teachers to get ideas from each other's schools, so she offered to take them on a tour.

Jennifer Riggs and Karyn White from Oakdale Elementary head their school's Schoolyard Habitat Club. Susie Folk, environmental science teacher at Urbana High, and Heather Ruby, chemistry and environmental science teacher at Brunswick High, rounded out the group.

It was informal as tours go, with the five teachers all traveling in Wells' compact car. At Oakdale, Riggs and White explained they were working with soil that had been disturbed when their school was built in 2001. A hillside that slopes down from a parking lot has proven to be a tough area to grow grass, so the Schoolyard Habitat Club volunteered to turn the patch into a garden oasis.

Oakdale has one patch of mature wildflowers that survived the school's construction. Butterflies flew among the tall joe-pye weed. Plump blackberries grew on bushes. A bald cypress tree the students planted last spring was doing well.

"We have foxes, groundhogs, deer and rabbits," Riggs said. "When they built the high school, we had an influx of deer. Apparently, that was their habitat."

The school plans to build a small footbridge over a trickle of a stream to Oakdale Middle School, so students from both schools can take advantage of the middle school's outdoor classroom.

Bat boxes and bluebird boxes line the elementary school grounds, providing good birdwatching for the students, Riggs said.

Brunswick High plans to start a schoolyard habitat this year, Ruby said. "We want to do an ozone garden," she said. This will be for plants that can survive around cars and buses as they circle the school's parking lot.

Oakdale Elementary has a small wildflower garden at the building's entrance which Riggs and White and their students planted in their free time before and after school. The garden has bee balm, black-eyed susan, coreopsis, butterfly weed, serviceberry, coneflowers and pensimmon.

The tour's last stop for the day was at the Lincoln Elementary School arboretum, with 265 trees of 70 species. "I just love the signage," Riggs said. "It makes it friendly to use and learn from."