On Saturday March 3, 2012 at their semi-annual event - spring and fall - the Saddle Creek Garden Club came out in full force to weed, plant, harvest and prune the gardens and landscaping at Copperopolis Elementary.
The program, which began three years ago, has taught multiple Copperopolis children the benefits and beauty of gardening. The club built above ground vegetable gardens for each classroom at Copper school and taught the children about seasonal vegetable growth and cultivation. Due to the strict guidelines on pesticide use around children the club used this opportunity to also teach the children about natural pest controls, ie: plants that repel certain bugs.
Each spring the group, which seems to grow every year, brings their shovels, trowels, rakes, pruning shears, and plenty of garbage cans and hits the ground running. Upon entering the school grounds the first noticeable overgrowth tended to was the 'elephant grass' that can cut and slice at little hands and had all but covered the fire hydrant. Moving from there the team spread out weeding flower beds that they had so lovingly planted years ago with bulbs and have since split the bulbs and planted more through the school grounds. They weeded the gardens, pruned the roses, the flowering trees and tried desperately to remove the invasive crabgrass seemingly one root at a time.
