Tree planting at the Traditional Garden of Northern Academy School

This project really started out with the aspiration to create an environment that's going to nourish our students for the years to come. How long have you been working on this during the past two months? Well I guess you could call me one of the sponsors for this project and I think James has really brought everyone together. It's good that we have teamwork most importantly is to get this together. An immensely growing experience and a real test of will to just to keep going. Hello everyone! Today I'm back in Middletown for the garden that James showed me about two months ago. I'm gonna have another conversation with him. He's gonna show me the progress they made working really hard in the past months. So let's see what's going on. Hey James! Hello! Great to see you again. How was it? You've been planting a lot since last time. How long have you been working on this during the past two months? Oh god! I'm flowing down the river and I'm in the current. My bearings have kind of... That means a lot. It's been a lot. It's been every day and it's been a real part of my growth. What began as a designer and has eventuated as a constructor along with some others here. It's just been an immensely growing experience and a real test of will to just to keep going. So these trees are actually going to form like the kind of the frame of the garden. A little bit like columns that are going to go down the edge. When you look into the garden, it'll really give dimension to the garden. Having these trees line each side, it's going to create a part of history for the the Northern Classical Garden. Let's place the trees in position. Well I just picked up these trees. These green emerald abbervatties. So now I believe we're going to plant them in here. I think it's going to be great for the kids to have this kind of natural environment and obviously the classical design is very in keeping with the traditional values of the school. When we sort of got further on with the design and it was starting to take shape, we reached out to some people who we thought might be interested. And that's when we came across, well Lauren's been a friend for quite some time. So I already knew he had a sensitivity to classical culture. So I'd just like to introduce Lauren as a key benefactor for the project. And he's really allowed this to happen. Well I guess you could call me one of the sponsors for this project. And I think James has really brought everyone together. One of our goals is to pass culture on to the younger generations. And what does that involve? Well it involves real physical things. And I also thought from an educational standpoint, this garden serves a lot of different purposes. You know if you want to learn about plants, you can learn about plants and biology. You want to learn about art and landscape design, that's part of it. And later on there's going to be a food garden. So you can also learn about gardening and food production and agriculture and so forth. So I thought it seemed like an excellent idea. This project really started out with the aspiration to create an environment that's going to nourish our students for the years to come. It's a place they can hang out in, they can play in. And they're going to be able to have classes here. And it's really going to form a part of their upbringing in these very sort of formative years. One guy, he was the water boy. And he would head a cart and he would collect buckets of water and come to the plants. So it was kind of... And then you saw the little girls like stepping up. And they were getting in there and sort of planting these plants. It was quite remarkable. So I think, as I've experienced for myself, I think it's as much for others. It's been a good growing experience for a lot of people there. They're getting in and doing things that they don't usually do. So this is the composted soil. You've got a good load of this. And that has a lot of nutrient in it that will feed the plant over time. We sort of mix this in with the existing soil. And what we've got here, what Ben's got is the mulch, which is we've put a handful of that in the bottom. And then that'll break down over time and give the plant a little bit more nutrients. It's great to have a machine. It would help out a lot, you know. And it's good that we have teamwork, most importantly, is to get this together. You know, everybody do their own part. And all I do is just drive the machine and dig holes. You can see a lot of progress today. We've got a lot of the pink cloud, the hydrangeas going in. We've got some more going down this way. And we've even got a little vision of here of a blank spot that's still to come. But we've got plans and starting to look at this in more detail, which is going to be the pond and potential fountain elements. So we fleshed it out with a little bit more of the purple tone. So we've got the Russian sage now, as well as the lavender. And then the yellow and the white sort of really play off with that. So we're starting to sort of see this color palette. And as of this coming week, probably towards the end of the week now, people will be able to come in and just experience it. And it'll start to shape people's lives. The more we can share this with other people who don't know the tradition so much, that's the real way where people can really begin to see it, experience it, and appreciate it. And undoubtedly, what we're seeing and what I'm sure we will see is people really loving it. That was a great day, I would say, man. Yeah. You did fairly well with all those trees. Right. You have more to go, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, we got a significant waypoint today, which is pretty happy about. And then, yeah, there's going to be further stages in the months and years to come as we sort of build out different parts of the garden. You know, we got the structure and the foundation today. I'll be back in six months or what? Yeah. First for me. Well, maybe in the spring. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, maybe the end of the fall. It's seasonal. It's going to evolve. So, you know, yeah, we can go with it. I'll be back. All right. Cheers, Marco. See you soon. See ya.