The Children’s Learning Garden at Blue Heron Park
- 4 hours ago
- 10 min read
By Ethan Robison, Pollinator Pals Manager, and Kristina Lefever, Volunteer Executive Director
In late 2024, Sandy Wine, manager of the Community Garden in Blue Heron Park in Phoenix, invited Pollinator Project Rogue Valley to create what she called the “children’s learning garden” in the unused back section of the larger fenced garden. This Community Garden has been managed by Sandy, a well-known Phoenix resident, gardener, and mover and shaker, for over a decade, providing a place for more than 20 community members to grow their own vegetables and flowers. Because the back section of the garden was unirrigated, it was mostly bare except for a large pile of soil, a lot of non-native grasses and weeds, and a cute lizard hotel.
It was Sandy’s idea (and very soon ours) to turn this section of the garden into an outdoor classroom for PPRV’s youth education program - Pollinator Pals - to teach children about native plants and pollinators, and a space to give children gardening experience while creating connections with the outdoors. Thus began a multi-year process, leading to the creation of - wait for it! - the Children’s Learning Garden (CLG)! Turns out this was not a simple project, and we could not have done it without the help of SO many organizations and amazing people!
The biggest hurdle was funding. Where would we get funding to pay for plants, garden beds, soil, teaching supplies, a shed, and a shade structure, not to mention staff time? Luckily, at exactly the right time, we were able to apply for - and were awarded - one of eight OSU Extension Recreative Recovery Grants.*
This Grant was created to support economic recovery in Oregon communities affected by the 2020 wildfires, specifically “the development and implementation of outdoor recreation projects that benefit these communities”. The Almeda Fire, which burned along Bear Creek in Phoenix, was a tragedy, and the rebuilding and restoration of the green spaces still continues today.
The CLG is part of this recovery, providing a space for the community, especially young people, to learn about native plants and pollinators, land stewardship, climate resiliency, and how we can all become involved in making the world a better place. So, in August 2025, the grant from OSU enabled us to begin creating the CLG as a living learning center!
First, we must express our gratitude to the City of Phoenix for their wonderful support of this project from the beginning. Since the City owns the area, there were legal steps necessary before we could use designated community garden space for a different purpose. Once that was approved, the City’s Public Works Department (big shout out to Chris Stephenson and his amazing crew) began to get the site ready by running an underground irrigation line and moving the mounds of soil to the outside of the fence.
Once the irrigation line, with two new hose bibs, was in and the area was clear and mostly flat, construction could begin!
One of our goals for the CLG was to involve students, even in the construction phase, giving them the chance to be a part of something amazing, while contributing their own effort and personality to the project. The first group of students involved were middle schoolers from The Valley School. Lena Hosking, the school’s enthusiastic science teacher, had reached out to us regarding pollinator-focused lessons with her students, and she was on board with the idea of holding these classes at the CLG! So beginning September 30, 2025, every student at the school visited Blue Heron Park over the course of four field trips over a four-week period. Each Tuesday, about 30 students rotated through three stations: microscope exploration, habitat scavenger hunt (with fantastic longtime PPRV volunteer, Sara Enriquez, and new volunteer Angela Orpet), plus the service learning project in the CLG.
These middle schoolers had a lot of fun shoveling and tearing up the grasses and non-native plants we needed to remove to make room for four garden beds.
Then, each group worked to assemble the beds which would soon house native plants! Steven Sirianni, the delightful founder of Walls of Time Builders, provided the tools and expertise to build the garden beds. It was wonderful to see him leading the garden bed building station, guiding students through not only the construction of the beds, but showing them how to use tools as well. Many of the students had never used a shovel or a saw before, and Steven taught them how to use them safely. All of the wood for the garden beds was generously donated by Ashland Lumber. At the end of each field trip, the students left their hand prints on the garden beds with colorful paints, marking a job well done.
One of the most impactful contributors to the CLG project was C3 Enterprises, run by Vanessa Henson and husband Cody. The team helped plan the logistics for the space, and helped us understand the steps needed to make our vision into reality. Once we had a plan, Vanessa, Cody, and their team used excavators to remove soil, add gravel, install gabion walls, with more rocks to outline the paths. Vanessa has been a wonderful ally for PPRV for years, having helped lead PPRV’s From Fire to Flowers program following the Almeda Fire, to install native plant gardens for fire survivors.
Thanks to Bluestone Supply for the discount on the gabions - large wire “baskets” that are filled with rocks of a ‘just-right’ diameter to easily construct walls.
By this time, the garden beds were in place and ready for plants. Plants need soil to grow. The right nutrients, composition, and mulch make a huge difference. We like soil from Plant Oregon, so we had at least six yards delivered outside the gate of the CLG. We had begun working with students from MELS Academy about this time, who were focused on pollinators for a big portion of the 2025-26 school year - we are so happy to have our Pollinator Pals programming support some of those lessons. These students (and their adults) made a huge contribution to the garden, taking a field trip to the CLG specifically to move soil from the huge pile to the four garden beds plus the hummingbird garden along the fence. Click here or the photo below to watch a 40 second video of the student's good work!
Later in the summer, they researched the different native plants that we knew were coming from our ‘plant grant’ award from the Xerces Society (more below), making drawings, presentations, and dioramas about their assigned plants! We can’t wait to install this art, now printed on durable panels by A Better Sign Company, in the garden to help educate visitors about these native plants and the pollinators they support.
The Pollinator Pals team wasn’t sitting idly by while the construction was going on, of course. In August 2025, we had run a two-week summer learning program at Armadillo Community Charter School in Phoenix. We were thrilled to have two of those students, Mozi Turner and Charlie Bishop, join PPRV as paid interns, along with their classmate, Saturn, in December 2025, during the last three months of their senior year, thanks to Southern Oregon Youth Works! The three of them were consistent and amazing helpers in our nursery, office, and at the CLG, planting the wildflowers from Xerces, applying arborist wood chip mulch, weeding around and inside the garden beds, and watering the plants when needed. You can read more about their experiences they wrote for PPRV on our blog here.
Thanks again to The Xerces Society. Their habitat restoration kits provide native pollinator-friendly plants, along with tons of information about preparing a garden, creating habitat, and turning the garden into a haven for pollinators. We have enjoyed watching these plants grow and flower, and already using these plants in many lessons, and showing them off during mini-garden tours during events. Already we are collecting seeds from these plants, often with students, to share with the community.
Our biggest concern for the CLG project was lack of shade, and we knew that one of the most important and time consuming projects was going to be the construction of a shade structure. Our friend Sandy Wine happens to be a Bear Creek Valley Rotary member, and suggested that Kristina Lefever, our volunteer executive director, make a presentation to the Rotary about the project. During that April 2026 presentation, Kristina learned that Rotary is international, with over 45,000 individual local chapters, and approximately 1.2 million individual Rotarians! Kristina also learned how much this Rotary Club has done and continues to do for Blue Heron Park and Phoenix - they have been building and helping out at the park for decades, including building the two pavilions!
After that first meeting, John Duffie’, the incoming president for the Rotary and principal of CD Architects, offered to draw up plans for a simple but beautiful shade structure. We owe a HUGE thank you to the Bear Creek Valley Rotary and their building team - Bill Wallis, Stan Schlosser, Ron Taylor, and Tom Mustard, and of course John, for all of the time they have given to the CLG - in addition to all they have done for Blue Heron Park over the years. Their efforts in planning, organizing, digging, drilling, hammering, and more, and then actually building the CLG pavilion have been amazing, along with volunteers Adam Bishop, Bryan Nelson, and Emmanuel Alegria, who provided great help with the project. With another thanks to Cody of C3 Enterprise for bringing in a ‘drilling machine’ so we could get the concrete in the ground for the four posts!
Because of John, this project became the beneficiary of many other wonderful community members, three yards of concrete delivered and poured by Knife River. Then, big gratitude to Hughes Lumber for donating and delivering much of the wood we needed. With thanks to Home Depot for donating some of the construction materials.
Then it was time for the roof! Wow - JB Steel donated and delivered the sheet metal for the roof of the shade structure.
We knew we would see lots of bees and butterflies visiting the plants, but one pollinator we felt might be under-served by the CLG until we had more blooming plants were the hummingbirds! Hummingbird feeders can help these delightful pollinators get some of the carbohydrate-rich nutrients they need to survive. Our neighbor up the hill happens to be Blackbird / Ace Hardware - and they generously donated 5 metal hummingbird stands! We have already seen Anna’s Hummingbirds visit the feeders. During one class with Talent Middle School (more on them later), we even saw a Bullock's Oriole land on a feeder!
Hummingbird feeders must be cleaned and filled with a 1:4 sugar/water mix that needs to be replaced every couple of days. One of our long-time, may we say INCREDIBLE, volunteers, Deb Vroman, has been diligently tending these feeders. The hummingbirds recognize her now, and will wait and watch while she refills the feeders. In addition to tending to the birds, Deb often waters and weeds the garden beds. Although hummingbirds may not have the capacity to be grateful, we sure do!
Our new friend Peter Worley of PRW Construction donated several pieces of plywood for a teaching board. To complete our outdoor classroom, Malcolm Tachi (who has a wonderful garden plot right next to the CLG) donated a big white board. This shade structure has already been put to good use for a number of classes and events. We could not have had as many classes at the CLG as we have to date without the contributions of all of these wonderful people to create a shady space for students!
Another thanks to the Bear Creek Valley Rotary Club for organizing a Community Day event at Blue Heron Park at the end of June, when the garden and the CLG was open to many visitors from the community.
We are very grateful to the Leiter Family Foundation and the Jackson County Master Gardeners Association for providing funding for pollinator-garden focused lessons to teach students about native plants, seed collection, moths and host plants, and how we can all support pollinators with native plants and places for them to live and/or overwinter.
In addition to the classes mentioned earlier, we enjoyed working with the Southern Oregon Land Conservancy to engage elementary school students in a service learning project at the CLG. We were excited to be part of the Rogue Valley Council of Governments annual Salmon Watch field trips to Blue Heron Park with 100 Talent Middle School students, giving us the opportunity to teach students how to conduct pollinator surveys and see first hand how native plants can benefit pollinator populations. We are proud to be able to continue participating in these amazing field trips each year.
But --- we were in need of benches for the students! Huge thanks to the Girl Scouts of Troop #10267 and Talent Maker City (TMC) for making them happen! With big gratitude to Pacific Wall Systems for donating all of the 2x4’s, and PRW Construction (again) for donating beautiful, (repurposed deck) redwood for the seats!
Thanks to Molly Accord for coordinating everything and everyone: in one afternoon workshop in July, the awesome teaching team of Katie (“Butters”) Buttermore, and Kolby Schooley, led the Troop (young people and adults) through the process of constructing, sanding, and engraving eight beautiful benches that will provide comfortable and stable seating for students of all ages for years to come.
And the Rotary is not finished with this project yet! As we write this article, we are starting the next and final phase - building a shed to store our teaching supplies, including our eight benches. Stay tuned for an update about the shed, but we must say thank you again to Pac Wall for more wood donations, Peter Worley for contributing time and expertise, and of course, to the incredible Bear Creek Valley Rotary Club members who will be putting their muscles to work yet again! And last but not even least, much gratitude to our friends Sallie Rose and Allan Sandler for their financial support in helping us grow this garden and making the shed happen!
The story of the Children’s Learning Garden is still ongoing. But we wanted to take this big moment to pause, and recognize, appreciate, and thank all the people who have helped make this dream become a reality: the Children’s Learning Garden - a safe space, not too big, not too small, connected to caring community members, in a beautiful Park, by a Creek - for people and pollinators alike.
See more photos from the December 2024 to today in our photo album here.
Learn more about our Pollinator Pals program on our website here.
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