NajahAdamsHawkenProjects2021

     Medicine and Biology have been such a passion of mine in these past few years. After my STEM summer internship in 2019 at Case Western and University Hospitals, I knew I wanted to do something similar to that for my senior project. Working in a lab surrounded by doctors, making waves in the medical community while I’m still in High school sounded perfect, but COVID put a dent in this dream. However, gardening is something that my grandmother and I used to do together when I was younger. She had a huge green thumb and I wanted to follow in her footsteps. When Mr. Biggar sent an email out to the class asking if anyone wanted to take on this task, I was intrigued. I thought, “It’s not a lab, but it’s still biology. I mean in bio class I loved reading about the flora and fauna”, so I decided to sign up with Dani, who I knew would enjoy gardening just as much as I would.  After our first meeting with Heidi O’Neill, the landscape architect who is currently working with Hawken with the v

How does your organization affect the lives of others? How have you affected someone else while on project? At the beginning of our project, Dani and I didn’t think we would impact anyone. But as our project comes to a close, Dani and I both realize that our project is doing more good than we initially thought. At the beginning of our project, Dani and I talked to Mr. Dlugosz, who is a teacher here at Hawken in the science department. He told us that he finally appreciated that someone is finally taking care of the garden here on campus. Mr. Dlugosz has been teaching at Hawken for over 40 years, and he told both Dani and I that he is finally happy to see someone fixing up the Garden.  Earlier in the project, Dani and I were talking to Ms. Buckley, one of the art teachers here at Hawken, about putting a sculpture in our garden. She too was very excited and happy that Dani and I were taking an initiative to finally fix the garden. She said that at her time at Hawken, currently just clean

     The next step of our project was to make a detailed list and finalize the layout and plants of our garden. Including how much coping stone, pathway stone, and plants we need. With this, Dani and I decided to visit Heidi again and we touched up all of our plans. On Friday, May 28,  Mr. Biggar and I went to Highland Garden Center to purchase 67 square feet of “Desert Buff” stone for our garden pathway. With this now checked off, we still need to figure out how we’re going to buy sandstone for the pool coping, and when it’s going to be installed.  When we met with Heidi, we came to the fab lab to show her our final plans. She helped us draw plants correctly on an architectural plan. Our plants were originally rectangular, and Heidi helped us change them to be circular. While Heidi and I color-coded our plants, Dani was looking in catalogs and talking on the phone trying to find the perfect statue for our garden. Unfortunately, we were unable to purchase our Athena statue and pedest

     Heidi O’Neil and Lori Kalberer graciously agreed to meet with Dani and me months before our project started. Heidi is currently the landscape architect here at Hawken for the new veterans memorial. Before meeting with her, Dani and I drew up some not-to-scale plans of the entire Bétail garden and all the plants we wanted to include. Dani and I actually used one of Heidi's old plans of the garden that Mr. Biggar commissioned her for about three years ago and we based our plans off on this. Heidi talked to Dani and me about how to properly come up with plans that are to scale. She helped us get more measurements that were more accurate and helped us space out everything that we wanted to include, even a pathway!  After our meeting with Heidi, I went to the fab lab and spent hours trying to get a scale drawing of the area. I learned how to use an architectural ruler and paper and properly proportion everything and translate it to paper.  Our meeting with Lori was amazing. Dani, M

    During our first two days of research, Dani and I took note of everything that plants needed to thrive, sun, shade, water, and soil type. This is arguably one of the most important things about gardening. There are six different types of clay, sandy, silty, peaty, chalky, and loamy. Dani and I also needed to test the nitrogen, phosphorus, pH, and potassium levels in the soil in order to get the right plants. We first went to Bremec’s to look for a soil testing kit, but we were out of luck. We then tried the science department and they lent it to us to run our experiment.  Dani and I went out to our garden to gather 3 different soil samples from different areas of the garden, upper left, upper right, and bottom left. We wanted to test different areas to see if the soil nutrients were consistent throughout the entire garden. Dani and I also researched our location to see our zone hardiness. USDA zone hardiness is able to tell you which plants thrive in our area. In northeast Ohio,

     First thing in the morning on our second day, Mr. Biggar, Dani, and I ventured off to the Holden Arboretum located in Kirtland, OH, to get a feel for the plants we want to use in our garden. We spent about an hour there looking around and taking notes/pictures on all the plants we liked and wanted to use. For our project, Dani and I decided that we wanted to use pollinator plants and native plants to Northeastern Ohio in order to keep the theme of our garden local. We looked and took notice of many different plants and animals. We were able to take note of over 40 different species of plants, annuals, perennials, shrubs, and trees.  After coming back to school from Holden, Dani and I did further research on all of them eliminating the ones that were too big, an invasive species, attracted too many animals, or were not native to northeastern Ohio. In our garden, we hope to attract many butterflies and bees in order to pay homage to the White Family. We want to keep this campus be

     The first few days of our project, Dani and I spent it doing tons of research in the Hakwken Archives. We learned a lot about Lori Kalberer who originally restored the Shakespeare Garden in 1977. We also learned about the White Family and their current estate. The garden here is over 100 years old and was taken care of by Mr. White’s wife. The White Family owned a very successful automotive company right here in Gates Mills, OH. This land had many different animals roaming around as well. Animals like horses, and dairy cattle, even having one of the biggest dairy farms in Ohio. Dani and I also got a glimpse into the all-boys aspect here at Hawken, and what life was like on campus. There were garden clubs, and students would garden during school hours and even after school. I thought that was something very special and I hope our project can turn into something like this, getting the Hawken Community involved in taking care of something that students helped build. After learning