The creation of an outdoor learning and gathering space is the best use for an interior courtyard at the newly renovated South Portland High School, a group of students, staff and community members decided during a design meeting in mid-November.

Led by the school’s Sustainability Committee, the space will be turned into garden beds featuring native plants and shrubs, as well as an outdoor classroom space with appropriate seating.

“The courtyard gardens will serve as an exciting continuation of (the school’s) commitment to service-learning,” according to a fundraising pitch for the project on SeedMoney.org – a website that provides a “fundraising platform for food garden projects.”

A team of students in the Learning Alternatives program, which leads the school’s recycling and composting programs, will also use the new courtyard gardens to build on those initiatives, “offering further opportunities for students to research and design educational materials about courtyard plantings and related social and environmental issues,” the SeedMoney posting adds.

The gardens will also allow students to observe the full cycle of food waste, as the soil generated from the school’s compost program will provide the foundation for courtyard plantings.

“The garden beds will also bear fruit and vegetables for the school’s culinary arts class, while (offering) students in the sciences the opportunity to observe live plant growth,” the post states.

See www.seedmoney.org/en or email teacher Tania Ferrante at ferranta@spsd.org for more information or to volunteer to help bring this idea to fruition.