Lone Pine Elementary – Bloomfield School Rock Path

2018

Our hope was to create a space that would not be only visually appealing. But enhance the learning at Lone Pine. The space we had dreamt was an interdisciplinary space where students learn about weather and plants. In addition, we wanted to work to enhance the school’s mission of creating a sense of belonging both with staff and students. When students leave the Lone Pine, they will choose a rock, paint the rock to represent their journey through school and leave the rock as a symbol at the end of their journey. Staff and other school employees were asked to create a rock to add to the path.
Teacher Mrs. Tara E

Little Green Gardeners

Visit Website

May 2012

SiteScape partnered with Little Green Gardeners in Spring of 2012. Little Green Gardeners is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization that serves Oakland County, Michigan. Founded in 2011, its mission is to build vegetable gardens in elementary schools and teach gardening to children for their educational, physical, environmental and emotional health.

SiteScape created and installed the Vegetable Garden for Pierce Elementary School of Birmingham. We created and installed the raised cedar gardening beds and installed the picket fencing to house the garden. We also supplied irrigation lines to the garden boxes to ensure they were getting water. SiteScape was also able to secure donated seeds and plants from Wiegand’s Nursery of Macomb as well as a donation from the Bank of Birmingham.

 

ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

August 2004
SiteScape was fortunate enough to participate in an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The show spotlighted a family from Oak Park, Michigan and we were asked to donate time, material, labor, and design consultation for the landscaping at the Vardon’s home.

 

 

Season 2 Episode 7

When Stefan Vardon, 14, wrote a heartwarming school essay about his deaf parents and his blind and autistic 12-year-old brother, he had no idea that it would lead to the team from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition showing up at his family’s Oak Park, Michigan home. In two back-to-back episodes, the design team transformed the Vardons’ ordinary 980-square-foot house into a dream home outfitted with the latest communications and safety devices for people with hearing loss.

Meet Judy and Larry Vardon, who can’t hear their son Lance, and he can’t see his parents using sign language. This is not just a matter of inconvenience; Lance’s safety is also a concern, for sometimes Lance has found the house keys and let himself out in the middle of the night without his parents’ hearing him leave. The EM:HE team knew they had to find a way to make the family safe, as well as find the best way for them to communicate with each other — a real necessity for when Stefan leaves for college in a few years.

In an essay that Stefan had written — and which Judy included in the application for the show — he said: “I always have to sign to my parents in order to communicate, and always talk nicely to my brother for him to understand. I am so used to this life, it’s just that sometimes I wish I had a normal family and didn’t live this way. But the next day I am so happy that I have a loving family that treats me nice and loves me.”

Judy volunteers with blind and deaf children teaching Braille and sign language, while Larry is a welder for a car manufacturer who, in his free time, fixes his neighbors’ cars too, for free and without a garage to work in. Stefan, a nature lover, plays football in high school and is a car fanatic. Lance is a musical prodigy who likes Elvis, Beethoven and Mozart, as well as horseback riding.

For information concerning the Stefan Vardon scholarship fund contact:
Vardon Brothers Trust
C/O Merrill Lynch Financial Services
P.O. Box 721084
Berkley, MI 48072-0084

Beacon Tree Elementary School

Shelby Twp, Michigan – Tree Planting

September 2005