Local high school club gets thousands to relandscape campus
Angelica Terraza says the Garden Club at Palm Springs High School is inspiring the school gardener to save water by changing the landscape at Ramon Rd. and Farrell.
“We have a desert landscape in the garden area right now, and he was waking by and saw how beautiful, how low-maintenance, and how much water was conserved,” the club’s president says. “He would always have to work twice as hard to keep that area maintained and watered, and the plants and grass kept up, and he thought it would be a wonderful idea to make that desert landscaping.”
The Desert Water Agency took note, too. It gave the Desert Horticultural Society $2,000 to help the club make the campus landscape more water-conscious.
“It’s very much about the educational benefits of getting to students early in their lives, setting habits of good water use, and showing by example how we should be using water in the desert,” says Craig Ewing, DWA President. “We are delighted the high school is willing to do this.”
The area covers land from the auditorium to the football field. Local landscape architect Chris Herman drew up plans for the area pro-bono, so this money will go toward materials.
“We are removing large sections of grass, the trees that aren’t functioning well, our high-water usage,” explains Garden Club Coordinator and Desert Horticultural Society Boardmember Lisha Astorga. “We are making it more like a dry-river area.”
Terraza hopes this inspires others in the community, saying bland can be beautiful, too.
“Whenever they walk by or drive by, they will see how pretty the desert landscaping is,” she says, “maybe they will want to convert theirs to desert landscaping knowing it would cut the water bill, the water usage, and also it would be a beautiful scenery.”
DWA says the project will take “a few months” to complete.
To learn more about the Desert Horticultural Society, and it’s upcoming Garden Tour, visit www.deserthorticulturalsociety.org.
