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Students Gear Up for Earth Day Celebrations

Although Earth Day is only celebrated once a year on April 22, Ranney School is pioneering several initiatives across its 60-acre campus that will contribute toward improving the environment every single day. One of the most exciting projects that will debut on campus for Ranney’s Earth Day celebration on April 24, is the school’s new organic garden.

Spearheaded by Lower School Science Teacher Judith Salisbury, the garden will create a common environment for cultivating cross-curricular and cross-divisional connections, life-long learning skills and sustainable practices among students, faculty, staff and parents. In addition to providing fresh produce for the dining halls, the garden will serve as a living laboratory for hands-on learning experiences throughout the school year and summer programs, to promote healthy and sustainable life practices. “Gardening offers a chance for children to be partners with nature,” said Mrs. Salisbury. “I have always felt that in order for people to care about the environment, they need repeated positive experiences with the environment. “I hope this will be a place where children have joy as they are learning.” [Mrs. Salisbury talks about the project in more detail in this video]

The garden will be located on the Annex Building lawn and will feature a “sniff and snip” horseshoe herb garden, a giant gourd bird feeding station, a Native American garden, a pumpkin patch, a butterfly garden, a flower maze and vegetable beds. Ranney alum Richard Rehm ’69 and owner of Triple Brook Nursery located in Colts Neck, NJ, generously donated a truckload of plants and trees to compliment the Ranney School Earth Day effort. His support will adorn the garden with azaleas, lilies, crape myrtles, camellias, hostas, hydrangeas and Japanese maples. With the help of the Lower School as well as Mrs. Marnie Jones’ Environmental Science class, planting will begin on Thursday. “For Earth Day, we will start with the vegetable garden and flower maze, and we will plant perennial flowers next to the Commons Building for the Ranney family,” she explained. After learning that school founder Mr. Russell G. Ranney was an avid organic gardener, it was decided that this would be the perfect way to honor him and his family.

In the Lower School, students will dress down in earth colors, green, blue and brown on Thursday to celebrate. Over the past few weeks, classrooms have collected used school supplies such as glue sticks, markers and tape dispensers as well as dental products, including mouth wash containers and toothbrushes. All items were shipped to TerraCycle, a company headquartered in Trenton, New Jersey, that makes consumer products out of the pre-and post-consumer waste and through the reuse of other waste materials. For each collected item, Ranney is awarded points that can be redeemed for a monetary donation to fund other recycling projects. The Lower School Community Service Group also collected gently used backpacks to send to children in other countries. In Ranney School’s afterschool program Ranney Plus, a new environmental group called the “Ranney Rangers” has been started, where students in grades 2-5 will take nature walks, care for parcel land on campus and help with the organic garden.

Middle School hallways will keep the lights off on Earth Day to save energy and students will be participating in an Earth Day Poetry contest sponsored by English teachers. Science teachers are also holding a carbon footprint exercise in class where students will analyze their personal environmental impacts and illustrations of footprints will be displayed along the walls. The Middle School’s Environmental Club will launch an awareness campaign and all grades will watch environmental awareness videos and hold discussions during advisee periods on Thursday.

Members of the Upper School’s Environmental Students Taking Action (ESTA) Club will be continuing their annual tradition of encouraging the campus to keep as many lights out as possible to save electricity. The lights in the Upper School hallway will remain off during the day, and teachers are given the option to leave the lights off in their classrooms. The club will also be building a rain garden next to the Middle and Upper School Dining Hall and basketball courts. The garden will use native plants and will take up to two years to become fully established. “A rain garden takes water that comes from a building or another man made surface and redirects it before it goes down the storm drain with the goal of filtering out pollution that would otherwise ended up in streams,” said ESTA Advisor and Upper School Science Teacher Brian Moran. “The garden will be aesthetically pleasing and will benefit water quality for aquatic species.”

Many improvements have been made during the past few years, including recycling paper, computer equipment and ink cartridges, replacing the use of styrofoam in the Upper School Dining Hall with sustainable alternatives and using “green” cleaning products. Other projects completed around campus include the purchase of recycled copy paper, replacing canned and bottled beverages in the dining halls with beverage dispensers, upgrading light bulbs for less energy consumption and installing LED lights, installing motion-censored soap and towel dispensers, removing trays in the Middle and Upper School Dining Hall and converting to battery operated golf carts for the Operations staff.

On April 24, the day will begin with fourth grade planting spring salad beds, followed by Beginners participating in a nature walk on campus. Pre-K will then sow seeds in the flower maze before second grade assists with labeling the garden. Third grade will then sow seeds around the retaining pond, Kindergarten will sow seeds in the flower maze and first grade will create plant labels. The garden activities will conclude with fifth grade planting the Ranney Memorial Garden with help from the Upper School Environmental Club.
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Ranney School

235 Hope Road
Tinton Falls, NJ 07724
Tel. 732.542.4777
Our mission is to know and value every child, nurturing intellectual curiosity and confidence, and inspiring students to lead honorably, think creatively, and contribute meaningfully to society. 

We envision Ranney School as a nurturing learning community, in which families, faculty, alumni, and all of Ranney’s constituents collaborate to know and value every child, foster individual talents, sustain powerful connections between children and adults, and graduate resilient, globally-minded citizens.