The student garden has been facing major upgrades with the help of the Eco Lunches Club, which has been working tirelessly to make UC High a more eco-friendly school. Their latest update to the garden includes two new large trees planted in early February.
President of the Eco Lunches Club Senior Henry Jiang said, “The tree planting project is one of our many projects. This is a small part of us fixing our garden. A couple years ago, the garden was very barren. It was cracked, deserted; essentially there were no plants.”
Jiang said, “Our goal was to make the garden a more inviting space. We have installed a sprinkler system as well as planted many native species just to make the garden more enjoyable, for high school students to have a safe space.”
Senior Samantha Barton is a member of the club Eco Lunches. She said, “Eco Lunches Club first started to be about environmentalising and sustainability. Recently, our club has kind of adapted to be about habitat restoration and beautifying our student garden.”
Jiang said, “We have meetings on Fridays in room 437, Mr. Escalante’s room. We love volunteers because our club does a lot of recycling. Our club is also expanding to reduce food waste. We also do fun events where we find acorns or we work in Rose Canyon. We would love more people to join, because in order to expand our efforts we need more people to join the effort.”
“Now that we have an irrigation setup, we partnered with Curie Elementary School and they are offering to donate to the school two fruit trees, specifically a large orange tree and a large peach tree,” said Barton. According to Barton, the trees were donated to UC High and Curie Elementary by the Greathouse family.
Barton said, “We actually won second place at the San Diego Unified recycling competition back in 2024 and that grant money let us reach out to a nursery called Everde Nurseries. We reached out to them and they donated a carrotwood tree to us that Eco Lunches works to provide irrigation for.”
“I think this [the new trees] will benefit the school, especially because the trees will provide shade and create a welcoming green space. Before the garden was very uninviting and very desolate, hot and sunny. Now it’s much cooler, much more green, and at least for me, a much more inviting space where people can study and chillax,” said Jiang.
Eco Lunches has planted other trees previously, outside of the student garden. “My club partners with Friends of Rose Canyon, a local non-profit in San Diego County. Their mission is about habitat restoration in the Rose Canyon, which our school borders on, so we partnered with them to do habitat restoration on our campus, our student garden, and in the surrounding slopes,” said Barton.
“We have planted about 55 native coast live oak trees and repopulated that environment and in the surrounding canyon lands we planted about 150 oak trees bordering our school,” said Barton.
Club Advisor and AP Biology Teacher Mario Escalante said, “It’s such a rewarding experience to see students taking ownership of their campus and applying the things that they’re learning in the classroom outside the classroom.”
Jiang said, “I founded the club last year, and I did it to foster a strong sense of community and sustainability. That was after our sustainable Fork Pilot Program, which we conducted a couple years ago. So this is just to continue our efforts in sustainability and expand from reducing waste to the garden, to educational outreach, and to planting acorns.” The garden welcomes all UC students.