Youth helps school

• By C. J. FUTCH
• Advocate Ascension section writer
• Published: Jul 9, 2009

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Allie Gremillion likes trees.

When the eighth-grade Dutchtown Middle student saw the construction begin at the new Spanish Lake Primary School, she was a little disappointed to see the woods around it being cleared away.

“We live by it,” Gremillion said, “and it looked so drab and dead and stuff.”

She talked to her mom, Jenny Bruno, about it.

“She’s into nature,” said Bruno, whose son will be attending Spanish Lake when it opens in August.

Gremillion was thinking of him, and all the other children going to school there, when she struck on the idea of planting something — anything — to bring the campus back to life.

Gremillion decided to donate and plant a crepe myrtle tree on campus.

“I talked to a friend about it, and he thought a crepe myrtle would be pretty when it flowered,” Gremillion said.

She and Bruno approached school Principal Britt Colon about it, and Colon put them in charge of an effort to beautify the campus.

Bruno rallied volunteers through the parent-teacher organization, and when they arrived to plant at the school on June 27, they got much more than they bargained for.

“We had three families, about nine or 10 people, who came together,” Bruno said. “Someone brought popsicles, and we probably had people bring by $600 or $700 worth of purple and orange flowers,” she said.

Lowe’s provided mulch, and the Louisiana Nursery gave them a discounted rate on the tree, Bruno said. In a few hours, the landscape was dressed in Spanish Lake’s school colors.

It’s a small tree, but Gremillion hopes it will grow with the students, and provide them with a little visual relief from their studies for years to come.