Flagstaff High School

Finding New Life among the Courtyards

Ash Freyer

Mrs. Musta’s honor’s biology class has made it their mission to help restore Flagstaff High’s courtyards to a beautiful and lush state. Their mission is to make it so students will actually want to go into the courtyards and spend time in them instead of the courtyards being empty and overgrown. The students are trying to prepare the garden beds and make them usable come springtime. That way, they can plant a variety of new things in them. The class is split up into 4 groups to help spread out the work. These efforts are also being aided by the wonderful company Tera Birds. A company that’s mission is to help students get more into gardening. Over the last 10 years since this program began, Mrs. Musta stated that, “both gardens have been dramatically transformed!” highlighting the amazing effort and work that students have been putting into this project. 

These beautiful gardens have a lot of stories to tell, as well as a lot of beautiful fruits and vegetables to harvest and use for the students. The harvest is often used by the culinary students as well as can be taken home by students that are part of the program. Some of the things that they grow inside the two courtyards are, cauliflower, pumpkin, squash, as well as strawberries and even broccoli. Someday this program wants to invite people to visit the wonderfully transformed gardens and to try all the different fruits and vegetables that they have cultivated. 

There’s many different sections of the gardens, including an aquatic section where they grow cattails. The courtyard also has a little pond which has many stories of its own, including one told by Mrs. Andrea Heartly of Tera Birds, she said, “A pair of mallard ducks flew in here and laid their eggs in the garden.” This resulted in the garden being inhabited by a bunch of little ducklings for a while. The students in honors biology that aren’t helping prepare the garden beds for planting were inside painting a mural to place in the garden to help add atmosphere and make the area even more inviting to the students. Last year the students painted a mural showcasing the endangered species of the Pinon Jay. This whole project is a major step into helping Flag High be more welcoming and encourage students into other parts of the school that aren’t just the main academic halls. 

The students in Mrs. Musta’s honor’s biology class are also being helped by some NAU students who are trying to get some credit to help them in college, these students are named Liz and Maddie who bring a new perspective from a different point of view.