Building a Grass Couch at Rondout Valley Middle School

I am delighted to see the many changes happening not only at Marbletown Elementary but, also at Kerhonkson Elementary with their garden and, now with the new garden being built at the Middle School. One of our recent project has been building a grass couch in the middle school garden. I love this idea and I think the kids will too. The one thing I can't say is that it was easy to build. We marked the areas for the couch to be 5 feet by about three feet and then we started shoveling and wheelbarrowed about 5 or 6 wheelbarrow fulls of dirt to the area. We then proceeded t become COVERED in dirt as we wet down the dirt inorder to pound and mold the dirt into the shape of a couch. Our plan was to put wire netting around the sides and back of the couch to keep the couch stable and from collapsing. tis took some planning but we eventually were sucess ful and able to build the backrest of the couch. The base of the couch is complete ans we plan on digging up sod from an area where an outdoor classroom is being made to lay over the couch. All of the work we did took us about four hours and I slept very well that night.