Ballard High School students participated in the Funky Junk category at the Nortwest Flower & Garden show and created "Club Fungi", an interactive musical party space surrounding fungi and made with recycled and found objects.
The Northwest Flower & Garden show wrapped up this weekend and among the prizewinning displays was Ballard High School's funky garden.
Ballard High School's "Club Fungi" was part of the Funky Junk category, which encourages high school horticulture students to create unique garden displays using recycled materials and found objects.
Born from the creative collective mycelium of BHS greenhouse students, Club Fungi grew into the interactive musical party space and judges named the display "Most Funky/Cool/Unusual/Creative".
India Carlson, who teaches horticulture and botany at Ballard High School and supervised the project, said the exhibit was made by student volunteers who earn
service learning hours by participating.
"This year they racked up an impressive total of 150 hours in about 5 and a half weeks of time," she said.
Students drove the process, designing the background and spent many hours stenciling.Donations were received from Limback lumber, Miller paint, Swanson's Nursery, and the ReStore and students came up with the fungi theme because they had recently covered the topic in class.
"We had just finished studying fungus in class and the theme of music for the show led to backyard bar - ala Club Fungi, which is an even funnier title if you know that one of the families of fungus is the club fungus or basidiomycetes," Carlson said.
This was the third year that Ballard High School participated in the program and received honors all three years. In 2011, they were awarded 'Best Example of Re-Characterization' and in 2010 they came in at second place.
