Garden Project Offers Hope After West Bloomfield Suicides

WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI – A literary garden created by West Bloomfield High School students to spread positive messages of hope in response to several suicides by classmates is a winner in a national contest that recycles and repurposes empty milk and juice cartons.

The Carton 2 Garden Contest sponsored by Evergreen Packaging and KidsGardening.org gave students in more than 130 schools across the country a hands-on experience in repurposing empty milk and juice cartons to build or enhance their school gardens.

In the West Bloomfield project, students turned the empty cartons into functional birdhouses, then decorated them with messages of hope from American Literature.

The school received a $1,000 prize that will be invested in the garden, according to a news release.

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The West Bloomfield entry draws on a song from They Might Be Giants, “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” and Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the Thing with Feathers,” and is designed to “provide students who hang out in the courtyard with uplifting messages of love and support,” according to the project application, which noted:

“The students overwhelmingly embraced the idea, grateful for the opportunity to take action.”

Science students designed irrigation systems for newly established plants in the literary garden. art students researched and planted flowers that could be sold to raise money to make more improvements to the courtyard, and together.

“Together, our students and teachers have done everything we can to provide a Garden of Hope for our students to find a place of healing, inspiration, and beauty as they recover from their grief and sadness this year,” according to the award application.

Three ninth and 10th-grade high school students had taken their lives in a six-month period last fall, according to a WDIV-TV report.

West Bloomfield was the only Michigan school recognized with awards. Read more about the Carton 2 Garden Contest here.

Image credit: Carton 2 Garden