Home Depot staff volunteered to help Washington Elementary School students create a memorial garden Thursday for classmates they lost in a deadly fire in March.
Students at Washington Elementary School Friday enjoy a new bench built the previous day as part of a memorial garden.
Chehalis Home Depot donated materials to transform a neglected corner of Washington Elementary School’s grounds into a memorial garden Thursday, inspired by the deaths of Ben, Maddy and Sam Tower in a fire in March. Two of the three siblings attended the school.
Student volunteers work to remove a weed barrier Thursday afternoon from a neglected garden at Washington Elementary School. Students and community volunteers came together to transform the area into a memorial garden, inspired by the deaths of two of their classmates, Ben and Maddy Tower, in a fire in March.
More than 40 students and about 10 volunteers from the Chehalis Home Depot came together Thursday afternoon to transform a weed-covered garden area at Washington Elementary School into a memorial garden.
Students and volunteers from the community came together Thursday afternoon at Washington Elementary to transform a neglected and weed-covered corner of the school’s playground into a tranquil memorial garden.
The area, which for now includes beauty bark and a bench and will eventually include flowers and other plants, was inspired by the loss of Tower siblings Ben, 12, and Maddy, 10, Washington Elementary School students, who along with their younger brother Sam, 7, died in a house fire on March 4 in Centralia.
After-school program coordinator Cortney Knutson said she envisioned the area as “just a place for the kids to relax and read and remember Ben and Maddy.”
“I thought a bench would be an awesome place for them to think about that and relax and enjoy their life,” she said.
Knutson contacted Home Depot to ask for donations to help revamp the about 20-foot by 40-foot area of the school’s playground, which was once a native garden but has since been overgrown with weeds.
“Cortney actually contacted me and was looking for some little supplies and I actually offered my team and me to go out there and build it for them,” said Chris Patterson, merchandising manager at the Chehalis Home Depot.
Patterson and other Home Depot staff who were volunteering on their day off helped about 40 students remove weeds and an old plastic weed barrier, install a new weed barrier and lay down beauty bark. They created a long L-shaped bench with wood and concrete blocks for students to sit on.
“We enjoyed going out there and helping them,” Patterson said.
Knutson said she plans to continue work on the garden with summer school students by planting flowers in the area.
The school’s ecology club will likely take over the garden next year.
“We still have quite a lot of work to do,” she said.
While the after-school program generally focuses on building up skills such as reading and math, Knutson said she talked with her students about grief after the Tower siblings’ deaths.
The work party coincided with Sam Tower’s birthday, but that was unplanned, Knutson said.
“We do a lot of math and reading and everything but I also like to focus on things they don’t really get to talk about during the school day,” she said.
Working in the garden came as a welcome relief from traditional schoolwork for some students, while also giving them new skills.
“They seem to really enjoy it, I think it relaxes them to learn about something other than math and all that. It’s less stressful.”
The final touch on the garden will be plaques with the Tower children’s names. The garden will also include plaques with names of other former students or people connected to the school who have died tragically, Knutson said.
“We’ve had a lot of loss in our school, so we want to make it as positive as possible,” Knutson said.
