Students supply added color at Community Garden

One of Baldwin’s brightest spots got a little more color recently when a group of high school art students brought along some paint and brushes to decorate two picnic tables with vibrant designs.

About a dozen high school students paid a visit to the Baldwin Community Garden, located behind the Baldwin Historical Museum off Grand Avenue, on June 5 with their teacher, Michelle Liemer-Kelly.

Before the garden officially opened last June, Baldwin High School students helped paint a mural on the back of the museum depicting what the location once looked like — pond and all.

Liemer-Kelly has maintained a relationship with Rita Cavanagh, a Baldwin Civic Association member who was the driving force behind the garden and now oversees its day-to-day operation. After Cavanagh secured the donation of two picnic tables last fall from Nassau County, she reached out to Liemer-Kelly about having some students decorate them.

As the school year was coming to close, Liemer-Kelly set up the voluntary field trip for students in her Advanced Placement art classes.

“It means the world to me,” Cavanagh said of having help from the high school. “It’s just nice to see as many people use this garden as possible.”

The students painted Van Gogh’s Sunflowers on one table and Monet’s Water Lilies on the other.

Liemer-Kelly, a teacher in the school district since 1995 who has been at BHS since 1996, said it was nice to see how much the garden has transformed since her class helped paint the mural last year. “When we got here it was just grass and a big pile of wood chips,” she said of last year, adding that the garden now has much to look at and offer.

“It’s great when the community and the schools work together and are able to make each other benefit,” Liemer-Kelly said. “This helps our art program and it helps their garden.”