earth day at the smart home

photos by JB Spector / Museum of Science + Industry

The Boys and Girls Club of Chicago joined the Museum of Science and Industry to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day at the Smart Home / Smart Park yesterday (we had designed the Smart Home). Thirty students (ages 9 through 11) from Holy Angels School toured the home, met with the GE “Lighting Guy” Brice to discuss planting and energy conservation.

The students then helped plant raised beds of cool season crops of cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, kale, radishes, beets and collards. Then also learned about the worm composting in the garden.

Then came the Beekeeping and a “touch and feel” interaction with Madagascar hissing cockroaches, giant millapedes, tarantulas and other garden insects. It is refreshing to remember how much we loved insects as children. With all the benefits that these can offer our gardens and environment, it is good to tap into that love and re-appreciate them.

There was also a replanting of a Burr Oak (the previous Burr Oak had fallen last year and subsequently made into beautiful furniture in the Smart Home). Earth Day seemed a perfect day for the replanting which was a group effort by David Mosena (President and CEO of MSI), Bernie Jacobs (landscape designer of the Smart Home), Terry Karpowitz (wood artist that created the coffee table and headboard in the Smart Home out of the previous fallen Burr Oak), Keelin Kennedy (who created the dining room table in the Smart Home out of the previous fallen tree), Ron Rolford (with the University of Illinois) and 2 students from Holy Angels.

I look forward to seeing all the lovely planted creations by the Boys and Girls Club when I visit the Smart Home in late May.
The Smart Home: Green + Wired exhibit will be running through mid January 2011.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 12:02 pm and is filed under blog and tagged with smart home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.