Darden Elementary School restoring nature trails, creating outdoor classrooms

ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Ind. – Darden Elementary School hosted a “Lowe’s Hero Project Day” Wednesday morning with a goal of restoring nature trails and creating safe outdoor classrooms. Several organizations in the community came together to make it happen.

The school’s nature trails date back to the 1990s but fell out of use years later.

A volunteer crew from Lowe’s hardware joined forces with students from Clay High School, Notre Dame, and more to restore trails and walkways, and to create safe outdoor classrooms.

"When the pandemic started in March, you know, it was kind of a healing project for the teachers in the building, because we missed the students in the classrooms. *tears up* And, um, we just- we knew we wanted to envision something for when they came back and we felt like a safe way to bring them back in a way that they could still learn was to utilize the outdoors," said Principal Patty Karban.

The project was made possible from thousands of dollars of grants from several community organizations.