The Pond Pals from kindergarten and 2nd grade worked together to renovate the school’s pond, replacing the liner and filtration setup and installing a new rain barrel to capture rainwater that will be used to fill the pond and water the native plants surrounding it. They hope to attract native frogs and insects to their renovated habitat!

To reduce the local impact of single-use plastics, 6th-grade students created a mini-garden from used plastic bottles collected within the watershed. Their mini-garden contains native plant species.

Tiny but mighty, this homeschool family (a 5th, 2nd, and 1st-grader) participated in the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Oyster Gardening Program. They raised 500 oyster spat in their Watery Garden – cages located in the Elizabeth River – and will return them to CBF this summer for relocation to oyster reefs in the Bay.

Twelve high school students from Portsmouth participated in a 2-week summer camp to study and grow oysters, culminating in the release of 4,000 oysters along the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River!