When I first entered high school at HHS, I did not see a single blade of healthy, green grass, only weeds and a handful of dying flowers.
The fields are all turf, and there is no grass in the quad. The few trees that are there are not enough to cover the tables and shade the students, and the rest of campus is not much better.
School can feel suffocating and overstimulating, and the lack of nature does not make it any better. The importance of nature on health is immense, as children who lived in greener neighborhoods had less mental health issues than those who didn’t, according to PNAS.
Incorporating nature into HHS could not only help the visuals of the school, but also the students themselves. Exposure to nature can help increase people’s attention span, according to the American Psychological Association. This, in turn, can help students perform better on school assignments and tests.
A solution to the greenery problem may be to make increasing greenery on campus a volunteering opportunity, since many students are looking for hours. The school should host a couple days a month on weekends dedicated to pulling out weeds, planting fruits and maybe even maintaining a community garden.
There are already clubs, such as Green Ops, that hold events similar to these. However, those are located at elementary schools. Instead, these new initiatives must be more focused on our own school’s lack of plants.
Comparing HHS to other schools in the district makes our campus seem even more bland, with MVHS’s quad and the front of FHS putting even our human-made structures to shame. Apart from the direct benefits for students, a growth in greenery at HHS would provide our campus with a much-needed glow up.
An influx of greenery at HHS would not only improve the wellbeing and focus of students, but it would also make the campus more aesthetically pleasing. Hence, there should be more opportunities to help grow plants around campus.
