By Becky Sindelar
A long dormant greenhouse on Bellarmine Preparatory School’s campus in Tacoma, Washington, is once again blooming, and the fallow ground encircling the structure is newly planted with trees and flowers. Hummingbirds, bees, tree frogs and chickens have either returned or just arrived in the verdant new home they now share with 900 high school students. Welcome to Bellarmine’s Kateri Garden.
It’s all thanks to the school’s student-led sustainability efforts. Over the last two years, the greenhouse has become a place for learning, and the barren land around it is now a garden teeming with life.
The garden’s purpose goes beyond being a beautiful green space. It’s about encouraging students to be stewards of our common home, and “it’s also a living lab,” says Bridget Nuno, a teacher at Bellarmine who also heads up the school’s Sustainability Committee, made up of faculty, staff and students. “We’re really trying to make it a place on campus that is another area for learning as well as experiencing creation.”
Nuno, a Bellarmine alumna, has been teaching math and science at the school for six years. Four years ago, she was asked to lead the school’s efforts on sustainability. One of the major initiatives was to make sure the greenhouse survived. It was previously known by the larger community for its plant sales—many students didn’t even realize it existed—but when the person running it retired and then Covid hit, it became a home for unused desks instead of plants. Students prep an area that is now part of Kateri Garden.
“The Sustainability Committee worked hard to make sure that the greenhouse stayed on campus and that we dedicated time to establishing it,” says Nuno.
Amy Savage, who teaches strategic learning in the Academic Center of Excellence, runs the greenhouse program. “When I first joined the student-run Sustainability Club, we were talking about what to do with the greenhouse and the surrounding area. Thankfully, we have this amazing group of students who are really dedicated,” she says.
The group came up with the idea of creating a Saint Kateri Habitat, a designation through the Saint Kateri Conservation Center, a Catholic nonprofit conservation organization. The group derives its name from St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint from the territories of the future United States and Canada. She is popularly venerated as a patroness of ecology.
Saint Kateri Habitats are sanctuaries that “go beyond providing essential resources for people and wildlife; they are living, sacred spaces that embody the harmonious coexistence of faith and ecological stewardship,” according to the Saint Kateri Conservation Center. The habitats must include both ecological elements and religious expression.
Savage’s sister happens to be a garden designer, and she designed the area, which includes the 20’ x 80’ greenhouse and the land surrounding it.
“Ten to 15 amazing kids came out twice a week last summer and literally hauled everything away—a foot of old gravel and crab grass—and loaded it up into trucks. You couldn’t pay people to do the work they did,” Savage says. Then they laid out the garden. “Without the students, it would never have been done. It was just amazing,” she says.
The garden has a fountain in the middle and benches for seating. While the students were installing the benches, they had the idea to install a gazebo over a concrete pad, turning the space into an outdoor classroom.
Students not only helped create the garden, they handle the upkeep as well. There are about 100 students involved in the Sustainability Club, and within that there’s a smaller group that meets at the greenhouse for two hours every weekend, year-round.
“They never fail to show up,” says Savage. “I can leave it with them to oversee and do the work, and they teach new kids coming in what needs to be done in any given area.”
Designed with Purpose
Circular in design with a fountain in the middle and three entrances, Kateri Garden was designed purposefully to invoke the Trinity. It’s filled with native and hybrid pollinator plants.
“It’s been really important to us to make sure we’re not introducing any invasive species to the area, but knowing what we know about the dangers the pollinators are in right now, we’ve added plants that may not be local but won’t spread invasively and will also help the animals and the insects around here,” Savage says.
In the past year since the garden officially opened, the wildlife has increased, from the hummingbirds that play in the fountain to the tree frogs living in the trees.
Students continue to work on new projects to enhance the garden. They’ve installed four worm bins—which process food waste from the Jesuit residence—and a chicken coop. “We have four chickens that are laying eggs that we sell to pay for the chickens,” says Savage.
The garden is home to three beehives that produced 80 pounds of honey last year. There is also an aquaponics system, in which the fish are fed by plants, and their waste fertilizes the plants. “It’s very circular and sustainable,” says Nuno. There are also plans to install bat houses later this year.
A Living Classroom
Students get to enjoy Kateri Garden while they take classes—and it goes beyond science classes observing the plants and animals. PE classes take walks in the garden, and religion classes do quiet contemplation.
“The Transcendentalist movement section of one of our English classes came down and did a whole planting project based on plants that had been named in poems, so it was a neat little connection that they could make, and they planted all the seeds. And in the spring, we put them into the garden,” says Savage.
In the 2024-25 school year, Bellarmine will offer its first horticulture class as an elective science credit. “We’re adding to our curriculum now that we have this space,” says Nuno. “And that’s just the beginning.”
Savage also recently launched a graduation certificate focus on sustainability, open to all students. “The idea is that we are hopefully inspiring the next generation of environmental leaders,” she says. “So, when they go off into the workforce, they are thinking a little more environmentally minded than they might have before.”
Savage and Nuno both emphasize that the garden is student driven. “I think the way Bridget and I have modeled this is, yes, we are the faculty side of it, but the ideas come from the students, or we throw out an idea and let them run with it,” says Savage.
She recalls a moment after the garden had first been planted and was just starting to bloom. One of the students stood back and said, “We did this.”
“I was like, ‘Yes, you did,’” says Savage. “It was amazing. The power of change that they have is inspiring.”
