New Edgewood Habitat Nurtures The Kids — & The Birds & Bees

Nature erupted outside outside another New Haven school Friday, where fourth-graders Kamiyah Emery and Sasha Cohen Cox spread the word about the right time to taste the nectar from the honeysuckle they’re tending.

Kamiyah and Sasha shared their wisdom at the opening of an urban wildlife habitat that opened outside Edgewood School. It was the second such habitat opening this week. (Read about the other, at East Rock Community Magnet, here.) Six schools in all are creating greenspaces to give kids outdoor learning spaces while bringing more nature to the city. Besides Edgewood and East Rock, they include Barnard Environmental Studies Magnet, Columbus Family Academy and Worthington Hooker Elementary Schools. Common Ground High School has been helping all the schools design and put in the greenspaces, with support from Audubon Connecticut and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Students, their parents, and teachers have been planting and caring for milkweed, cranberry, and bearberry bushes, among other plants along the Edgewood Avenue side of the school as the first phase of a three-phase project. Besides providing kids a peaceful, interesting place to learn, the habitat feeds birds and bees.

The work adds to two previous eco-efforts at Edgewood: a community garden and …

… more recently, a bioswale.

At a ceremony Friday morning, fourth-grader Matthew Judd, one of the students who worked hard on the habitat, helped Mayor Toni Harp cut the ribbon …

… while second-graders Betsy Nardini and Iyla Bhandary-Alexander unveiled …

… a habitat sign for which they designed the art.

Then students conducted tours for visitors. Kamiyah and Sasha have been watering the honeysuckle, and learning the finer points of the plant.

“You take the honeysuckle on the bottom,” Kamiyah said. ​“See the green part here? That’s the part you eat the nectar from. You should wait until it blooms all the way …”

“… or,” Sasha continued, there won’t be much nectar to taste.