'Kids will have some shade': Grant helps bring trees to Hackensack school
HACKENSACK — Dozens of flowering trees are blooming at Jackson Avenue Elementary School and a nearby park, thanks to a $20,000 grant from TD Bank and the Arbor Day Foundation.
More than 50 trees were planted at the school and next door Polaski Park, using about half the grant money. The remaining funds are being spent now on gardening tools, gloves and books for the school library that will help teachers incorporate lessons on plants, trees, and growing vegetables into their curriculum.
The grant was awarded to 20 cities in the U.S. and Canada to promote environmental equity and bring green spaces to underserved communities with little shade. The area surrounding Jackson Avenue School, near Route 80, at the south end of Hackensack is one of the city’s lowest-income neighborhoods and the sparsest tree canopy coverage, said Josh Cohen, the chairperson of the Hackensack Shade Tree Committee.
“Visually, it’s transformational for that space. It looks and feels totally different now,” he said. A pollinator garden using native plants like red twig dogwood, goldenrod and echinacea was planted at the school’s entrance and a rain garden was installed at Polaski Park near the walkway, to soak up some of the rainwater that sometimes floods the park.
Before the trees were planted last fall by city public works employees, the 4-acre space was a grassy expanse with just a handful of trees. The native plants in the two gardens were chosen, with the help of the Hackensack Garden Club, to attract birds, butterflies and other wildlife.
“We’re hoping it will bring access to green space to the community,” Cohen said. “The kids will have some shade right where they get dropped off and they can see plants and butterflies and insects as they come in.”
Other than a tiny town in Maine, Hackensack was the smallest city in the U.S. to receive the TD Green Space grant, whose recipients included Baltimore, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.
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The school has integrated outdoor learning in its curriculum for several years, but the gloves, gardening tools, books and other materials purchased with the grant will allow teachers to expand upon those lessons.
“It’s an invaluable experience. They are so excited to go out and put their hands in the dirt,” said Breda Kish, a teacher at the school.
Each homeroom will be designated its own tree to “adopt” and care for, and each grade has a garden bed where the students can plant fruits and vegetables.
“This part of town really didn’t have much greenery. Now they can go outside and read, they’re learning about the different kinds of trees, the plant’s life cycle, the food chain,” said Christopher Moran, the school’s principal. “We’re using it in art, library, science. It’s a part of our curriculum now and we’re blessed to have this extension.”
Eventually, Moran hopes to use a corner of the school’s large lawn as a community garden, where students and parents can tend to vegetables to be harvested and enjoyed by the community.
“Right now, the idea is in its infancy, but the goal is to have a garden here, where kids and their families could come in and tend the garden and share the vegetables,” he said. “We want it to be a home, school, community connection.”
Reviana Hadinata, the school’s PTA president, said where she grew up in Indonesia, her backyard was filled with trees.
“When I came here, I wanted my children to have that same experience,” she said. “For me, I think hands on teaches more than just books alone — by seeing, by touching. The other day, the trees started blossoming. My son said, ‘look mama, it’s beautiful.’ They are all so inspired.”
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: School, park in Hackensack's sparsest tree area now have shade
