Greenprints for the Future

Impact stats:

• 61 students across grades 6-10 restored ~1 acre of land into a nature learning trail
• 75+ community service hours contributed from 5 Youth Leadership Team
• 5+ interactive learning areas, including pollinator, insect, and wildlife habitat stations, created
• One digital app developed

When Delores Williams received a Greenprints for the Future grant, she couldn’t have imagined that a plan to create an educational nature trail would grow into a way for kids at the Generations Forward Learning Farm, a 12-acre nationally recognized regenerative agriculture and educational farm in rural Alabama, to become passionate environmental storytellers. Over the course of the project, 61 students in grades 6-12 helped transform nearly an acre of trail space into an interactive nature tour. Students played an active role in every stage, from planning to designing the educational experiences accompanying the trail. They even designed materials like passports and take-home wildlife exploration sheets for visitors. One of the project’s most innovative elements is its ability to be self-led, with QR codes on the signage that lead to a “Talk to the Plant” experience. While navigating extreme drought conditions and unpredictable weather, the students demonstrated remarkable resilience and dedication throughout. This grant allowed students to step up as leaders and conservationists, its excitement even rippling throughout the Chancellor, Alabama community, as city officials named the project Alabama’s First AL Learning Trail.

Impact stats:

• 20 6th and 7th grade students planted 16 native Texas species planted
• Reduced water use for landscaping and supported groundwater recharge in a water-stressed region

Sitting northwest of San Antonio, Texas, is a city called Helotes, also known as the gateway to Texas’s “hill country”. There, 20 6th and 7th Life Science students were selected to transform a barren stretch of campus dominated by non-native Bermuda grass into a thriving native Texas garden. The non-native grass required heavy water use, supported little wildlife, and left the landscape dry and lifeless for much of the year, in a region already facing ongoing drought. This hands-on restoration project, rooted in local ecological knowledge, was entirely student-led as they removed the invasive grass, prepared the soil, selected, and planted the 16 native Texas species like Frogfruit, Bluebonnets, and Texas Redbud. Prepping the land proved a big challenge and opened the students' eyes to how invasive plants can dominate ecosystems and how critical freshwater resources are. Once the garden was established, the Great Hearts Invictus students observed pollinators returning, identified new species *in the garden, like moths and scarab beetles, and even found new native plants they didn’t originally place growing in the garden. The grant revitalized a neglected outdoor space while allowing the students to build something special that they naturally wanted to sustain, with many of them already eager to expand the garden next year. This living landscape built by Mr. Murrie’s class is now a living, learning environment and icon for student-led environmental change.