News and Stories

Last week in Walnut Hills, the Reds Community Fund (RCF) wrapped its 16th annual Community Makeover. This is the 13th year that the Zoo has contributed to the event. What started out as a tree planting contribution has slowly evolved into a green wave of impact that includes school learning gardens and solar infrastructure. The Reds, along with key sponsors like P&G and Cincinnati Children’s, allow us to dream big, reimagining unused lots as bountiful community greenspace. Our increasing contributions to these RCF projects, and to community projects in general, have mirrored our organizational growth as the Greenest Zoo in America.

Highlights from this year’s Community Makeover include a revamped kitchen garden for Frederick Douglass Elementary School, landscape renovations to the Bush Recreation Center, and the installation of a new garden at the O’dell Owens Center for Learning. The O’dell Owens Urban Learning Garden, which less than three weeks ago was a neglected paved bus turnaround, has been converted into a 13,000 sq. ft. interactive greenspace. In total, 1,402 plants were packed into this garden so I feel comfortable saying this is the most beautiful bus turnaround in the entire world.

O’dell opens like a book. Before you enter, you are greeted with a table of contents – an entry curb of labelled plants in a clearly defined row. These are the plants we’ve highlighted to tell the story of the garden, all unique in their natural function, season of bloom and attraction to pollinators. As students make their way into the garden, these plants are peppered throughout acting as chapter headings, carrying the themes of the story from season to season. This interactive element takes place amongst a dense matrix of 1,300 shrubs, perennials and grasses nestled beneath some of the most inspiring specimen trees that grow in our region.

Another feature of the O’dell Owens garden emphasizes the geometry of the space. The former bus turnaround was a perfect circle enclosed by a seating wall. The seating wall remains around the perimeter of the garden, but we’ve added a permaculture berm above the wall to enclose the space. This berm includes apple, peach, fig, persimmon, hazelnut, pawpaw, raspberry, blackberry and serviceberry. The students will be encompassed by a food forest.

These garden transformations are striking during the stretch of weeks they occur, but the real work begins immediately after the last plant is mulched. It takes strong relationships, good communication and a little horticultural magic (weeding, watering, mulching) to keep a garden thriving. Every year we learn something new relating to the success of these gardens and we’re taking good notes. Gardens must be inspiring and inclusive, but they must also be practical. I’m proud to work for an organization that understands these tenets, supports its employees, and partakes in direct, local conservation impact measures.

I can keep going. The rain. The mud. The timing and logistics of installing these spaces. The plant growing, the transport of these living things to the site at the exact right time. The roaring machines. The unrelenting city heat. The rain. The mud. The hauling of tons of soil, gravel, mulch. The timing. The sweat. Leaning on our amazing crew every single day. The coordination of 500 volunteers for 5 hours. And in the end…smiles, zebra swallowtails, monarchs, skippers and red admirals, young people’s brain synapses firing, the waft of crushed mountain mint on the breeze, shade, so many bees and butterflies, a job well done, lives changed. It doesn’t get any better.

For a complete plant list from the O’dell Owens Urban Learning Garden, click here.