#BullockGarden – Glassboro, NJ

Dorothy L. Bullock School’s new garden grew from an idea, a tiny seed, planted in teacher Sonya Harris’ imagination and blossomed with the help of many others including celebrity landscaper, Ahmed Hassan, and his team. The California-based landscaper made famous by the DIY Network’s “Yard Crashers” and HGTV’s “Turf War,” was used to handle questions posed to him on social media. When Harris posed the question of starting a garden at her school to Hassan on Facebook, he thought nothing of it at first.

“Usually when someone reaches out to me, I’ll try to answer the question and move on about my business,” Hassan said. “But the next thing I know, I get booked to do the Philly Home Show.”

Harris and Hassan met up in person at the convention. That’s when Hassan realized how much the garden – at that point little more than the seed of an idea – meant to Harris.

The Garden Build took place over the weekend of May 2-3, 2015. A group from the N.J. Agricultural Society trained teachers on May 6 and provided a free curriculum on how to incorporate garden lessons across the curriculum. Since that time, Bullock students and teachers have taken time to interact in this outdoor classroom space.