By Julia Barcello
“Imagine how it’s going to look, the iconic look of a beautiful water feature as you go towards the [Greenwich High School] campus” remarked Board of Education member Joe Kelly during a one-on-one interview discussing The Waterfall Project at Greenwich High School (GHS).
The waterfall, holding pond, and other natural areas at Putnam and Hillside roads next to Greenwich High School will be redesigned to conserve Greenwich High School’s natural beauty. The Waterfall Project aims “to preserve and protect the last natural and environmentally sensitive site on the GHS [Greenwich High School] campus”. The project is taking into account the needs of the dilapidated environment from where to plant the trees to what flowers to line the charming area with.
The project is being completed by members of the Board of Education, the Greenwich Sustainability Committee, the Selectmen of Greenwich, Greenwich High School students from the Greenwich Environmental Advocacy Group [GEAG], and Greenwich Green and Clean led by Kanako MacLennan and Mary Hull. Greenwich Green and Clean will be the leading group in facilitating the redesign. The design is being donated at the courtesy of Sam Bridge Nursery.
Over the past 20 years, there have been 800 trees removed from the 54-acre high school campus. The trees were removed to construct additional parking lots, benches and tables, and to build a new stadium, among many other projects. While all of these additions are beneficial to the GHS community, the project is vital to preserving GHS’s natural surroundings. The Waterfall Project will help these preservation efforts by reintroducing trees to the sensitive encompassing wetlands, GHS students, and the Greenwich community.
The waterfall and pond are calming places for students to eat lunch, read, complete schoolwork, or have time to themselves during the hectic school day. Unfortunately, the areas have been deluged with trash and overgrown weeds, “it’s unkept, the benches get overgrown with weeds,” stated Joe Kelly.
Greenwich High School students, along with neighbors of Greenwich High School, are ecstatic about the completion of this project. Students are eager to have a new, clean and relaxing spot on campus.
On June 18th, there will be a clean-up from 10 AM to 1 PM which all members of the community are welcome to attend. Volunteers may park their car in the GHS parking lot closest to the Post Road. Just after this clean-up, Sam Bridge Nursery will begin to redesign the waterfall and pond area.
