From the garden experiences of Felder Rushing

Note: The following plants are best suited for Southern gardens

Azaleas belong on school campuses, for three reasons: They are beautiful, they bloom during the school year, and they start with the letter A, followed by the letter Z. Get it? A to Z.

Children respond to bright colors and broad concepts, so having an “alphabet garden” is a no-brainer. It’s easy to use both plants and hard-features to teach letters and also work in other things as well (organization, connections between plants and insects, orderliness, etc.). Bold, home-made or artistic signs representing each letter, with corresponding colors, are attractive throughout the entire year, and provide opportunities to be creative and artistic. For example, a large letter B painted blue (and painted-on bees) can have silk butterflies glued on.

Here’s a fun gallery with which to start. Let children look up others, then make their own decisions!

Azalea, algae, or armadillo

Bamboo, boxwood, bulbs, bottle tree, and butterflies, bees, and a birdhouse

Cedar, cactus, chives, chrysanthemum, coleus, canna, cockscomb, crickets, and compost

Daffodils and dandelions do better in a school garden than daylilies, which bloom when no one is there to see them, but dragonflies are a D, too

Elephant ears are a given for Southerners

Fire ants are hard to work in, but a fence, some ferns, and a flowering forsythia do well

Geranium, garlic, goldenrod (very good for fall butterfly gardens), grasses,
grapevine, ginger lily (flowers in fall), and spring-planted gourds

Herbs, holly, hollyhock, hummingbirds

Insects, iris, ivy

Junipers and jasmine

Kudzu, flowering kale and kites, and kerria (“yellow rose of Texas”)

Lamb’s ear, leaves (arranged by shape), larkspur (fall seeding), ladybugs

Mushrooms are easy to make from plaster, but every garden should have a
magnolia, mint, and moss. Mustard (especially the new ‘Burgundy’
variety) does well in the winter, and a mole figure can be cut from wood

Nandina, with its red berries

Oregano, oxalis, oak, and okra (which can be planted in the spring, for fall
harvest to teach seed-saving)

Pansies, palmetto, ornamental peppers, old-fashioned petunia pumpkins,
potatoes (plastic french fries?), and even plastic flowers!

Quince (flowering) never fails to bloom in the late winter, Queen Anne’s lace

Rain gauge, hardy rose, a big rock, maybe some rosemary, and a potful of
radishes and ryegrass

Snapdragons, snails, jars of different seeds (pine cone and acorns, to
coconut and wild grasses), a concrete squirrel, strawberries, and both
sunlight and shade (be creative on this one). And a spider web, real or
made from string or wire

Toads, tools, tulips, turnips

Umbrella, umbrella sedge, unicorn, an urn, and a sign pointing “underground” and “up”

Vegetables (made of wood, on stakes), verbena, vines, violet, viola (Johnny jumpups)

Worms, windmill, water, weeds, wildflowers

Xeriscape, represented by cacti and dry-looking water faucet or bucket, accessorized with a cowskull or rock

Yarrow and yucca

Zebra grass, a zig-zag sign, a plastic animal zoo, and of course zinnia

There are lots of other choices, but these are easy enough to start with, and all are tough enough for a school yard, and they perform in the school year, when kids are there.