POINT PLEASANT BEACH — The campus at Point Pleasant Beach High School is set to be abuzz with friendly pollinators and their favorite plants this spring, when seeds are planted in gardens recently built by members of the school’s Student Environmental Ambassador (SEA) Program.
As SEA Program founder, sophomore Landon Hoberman was approached by district supervisor of curriculum and instruction Christopher Wilson with grant money from Sustainable Jersey initiatives to construct and maintain pollinator gardens at the high school.
“Last year, I started the Student Environmental Ambassador program with Mr. (Christopher) Boniface as the adviser, which kind of mimics the overall program in high schools across the nation,” said Landon. “At the beginning of this year, Mr. Wilson approached me and asked if our club wanted to lead the implementation of pollinator seed gardens from a grant that they received from Sustainable Jersey.”
Sustainable Jersey is a nonprofit whose mission is to “empower New Jersey communities to build a better world for future generations with the tools, training and financial incentives necessary to pursue critical sustainability initiatives,” according to the organization’s website. The pollinator gardens are built on the school’s Bay Avenue frontage.
“We haven’t planted anything yet,” said Christopher Boniface, biology teacher and adviser to the SEA Program. “We’ve just built them in one day, then we put soil in them one day and now we’re waiting for the right time to plant seeds.”
Landon said, “I founded the Student Environmental Ambassador club here. “We had some students that took pictures — they’re our media team. We had secretaries to help get everyone there and schedule stuff, and we all worked on it. We had about 20 people there between staff and students.”
Boniface said that it is heartening to see students demonstrate such compassion for the environment.
“There’s a pretty large number of students involved in (the SEA Program) Landon calls me the ‘adviser,’ but he really runs it all,” he said. “He set up a Google Classroom, he makes the posts. It makes you feel good for future generations that somebody cares like this.”
“We earned our Sustainable Jersey school certification back in the spring of ‘23, and then last year they had $2,000 and $10,000 grants that Sustainable Jersey Schools and the NJEA (New Jersey Education Association) helped co-sponsor. And so we put in for one for some outdoor gardens, pollinator gardens and native plant species.”
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