In celebration of Earth Day, Rotary Interact club hosted an 8th period event on Apr. 22 to plant flower seedlings. The event invited all students to come and relax in its stress-free environment while creating new homes for the various plants that the students would later bring home. 

Sophomore Anusha Das had thought of the idea in order to host an event themed towards Earth Day for Rotary Interact, a service and community-project club. “There’s a lot of service clubs at TJ with specific niches, but over the course of this year we’ve generalized into a club that does chill no-commitment projects that aims to make the most impact out of what we have,” she said. “We’ve done appreciation cards, care packages, and eco-friendly related projects depending on the time of year. We thought that this would be a ton of fun and appropriate timing for Earth Day.”

Prior to the event, club members posted a poll on the TJHSST Facebook Group to get an idea of what students would be most interested in planting, with options such as mint accumulating 74 votes. In the end, they decided to provide a wide range of seedlings, including lavender, basil, sunflower, mint, and morning glories. Members used club funds to purchase the seedlings, as well as other materials required for cultivating the soon-to-be flora.

“We used the funds we saved up to shop for peat pellets and biodegradable pots on Amazon…the [seed starters] were simple to use, had good reviews, and were not too expensive,” Das said.

The addition of plants within people’s homes can ease the stress and worried natures that many students face within April and May, making it the perfect time to add greenery and flora–not only to celebrate Earth Day, but also the nearing end-of-the-year. And with the simple cultivation methods and easily-maintainable nature of the plants that Rotary Interact provided, it can be said for certain that the event took place at just the right time of year, and is also perfect for those without previous gardening experience.

With the success of the event, Rotary Interact is already thinking of possibly hosting the event again for next year’s Earth Day, as well as ideas to improve upon the activity and its feeling of atmospheric friendliness.

“It wasn’t a rushed activity so students had time to play video games, chat, and do other things,” Das said. “It went fairly smoothly and it didn’t take much to set up, and it also seemed to get a lot of people interested, so we will probably do it again next year. However, maybe I’ll take the time to pass out materials and snacks to each table individually to start conversation, because in the end, the aim is not only to do a service activity, but also foster a place where people can hang out with friends and make new ones.”