Parched turf gets an FFA makeover at Modesto high schools

Modesto FFA students are farming in miniature this summer, digging into little-used campus frontage to lower water use.

Downey High is the first to plant its water-wise plot, centered by the “Make a Difference Downey” sign gifted by the class of 1982. A dozen or so teens pitched in Thursday on the final phase, laying drip irrigation tubing in the landscape of silvery foliage and blue flowers ag teacher Susan Beatty picked to match the school colors.

“It’s beautiful out here now,” said sophomore Reilly Forest as she scraped a narrow ditch for the tubing. “We did a really good job,” she added with a grin.

“This was a pain in the butt putting in, but it looks good,” said 2016 Downey graduate Bryson Hoar, who came back to his alma mater to help.

“Hopefully it will look really nice, something to be proud of,” said senior Amelia Lunt, an FFA officer who normally sticks to floral design. The project taught her a lot about how to plant those flowers she arranges, including how to measure out the design and where to put plants, she said.

“Good scenery. Makes you proud,” said Camrin Forest as she worked. A senior, Forest will start her fourth year in FFA raising dairy goats. The summer switch to landscaping, she said, was just doing her part.

Pride in hard work, camaraderie, gardening skills and community service all come together in the pilot project that will replace beaten-down brown lawn with less thirsty plantings.

“(Ag classes) took lead on it. They’re using it as a great project,” said Jeff Albritton, head of career-focused programs for Modesto City Schools. “This is the view of where we want to go with landscaping,” he said.

Traditionally, schools here have used lawn almost as a soft asphalt, rolling it out over broad expanses kids walk around, bike over and generally ignore. Where the deep-drinking cover matters is on the athletic fields kids use for P.E. classes and sports.

“What we’re trying to do with this is lessen the impact,” Albritton said.

Downey’s plot, just shy of 2,000 square feet, will save an estimated 22,347 gallons of water per year with its high efficiency drip system and water sipping plants, figured by using calculations provided by Jesse Hernandez of Morris Wholesale Nursery.

Hernandez designed the plan for the Downey plot, picking out hardy, low-maintenance shrubs and grasses that coordinated with the Knights’ blue and silver theme. He chose woody ornamentals with year-round good looks, framed by blue sedge – a grass tough enough to be walked on and easy enough to mow over if it gets too bushy.

“It gave them a good silver border for defining the landscape,” he said. “In nature, gray foliage reflects the sunlight and it does not get as hot,” Hernandez said, making the Knights’ colors a good fit for a water-sipping landscape.

“It worked out that she wanted silver and blue,” he said. Deep blue, “tough as nails” dwarf asters will bloom in spring and fall. Manzanita and a compact strain of heavenly bamboo will add fall leaf color. An Australian native, Hesperaloe parviflora, looks like rosemary and will have a small blue flower.

Two boulders added to the scene – flat for sitting or standing – are surrounded by dwarf red yucca and a cousin of the boxwood plant will grow up around the Downey legacy sign. Wild lilac, a native plant, and salvia round out the plants chosen.

“It’s going to give them some sort of a color palette throughout the year,” Hernandez said. To make the area lower maintenance, he spread out the mostly mounding plants.

“I tried to leave enough space in the landscape so plants can grow naturally. Then they don’t have to be whacked back because of space,” he said.

The district gave each school a $5,000 budget to work with and provided the manpower and machines to rip out existing lawn and pour a cement mow strip at the edge. Then Beatty and the teens took over.

Rototilling the dry, hard-packed dirt left when the lawn came out came first – “And it was hard, hard, hard,” Beatty said. Then came fresh topsoil and humus that had to be mixed and mounded. Plants and bark came next. By Tuesday, students were battling the kink-happy turns of irrigation tubing and pre-punctured drip lines, laying them in shallow furrows and clamping them in place with ground staples.

Surveying his landscaped frontage, Principal Richard Baum said the area was chosen to highlight the school’s legacy sign. It had long been used as a student lineup area for afternoon buses, but those could be easily moved to other grass areas, he added with a wave toward a parched spread of weedy turf on the other side of the main school entrance walkway.

“Kids were walking across it, not paying any attention,” he mused. “Now it’s looking good.”

Modesto’s other high schools will soon have their own water-wise plots.

At Enochs High, a small area lies bare by its Sylvan Avenue marquee. Ag teacher Michele Schilperoort and students will have in done by July, said Principal Deb Rowe.

Closer to town along the same road, Beyer High put theirs, also at the bare patch stage, in a peninsula point as drivers arrive in the front parking lot. It will be planted within the next two weeks, said ag teacher Kristy White.

At Davis, students will be planting a section at the corner of Tully and Rumble roads, around the school sign, said Principal Mike Rich. The date work will start is still being worked out, as are details for Modesto High in west Modesto and Johansen High to the east.

Gregori High, in the Salida area, will wait a while to let its FFA students get through Stanislaus County Fair exhibiting, Albritton said.

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 8:10 PM with the headline "Parched turf gets an FFA makeover at Modesto high schools."